A list of must-read mystery novels
Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has earned critical acclaim.
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Updated: November 02, 2009 8:06 AM
By Vicki Booth
Drawn to puzzles? Like to investigate and solve crimes from the safety of your armchair? NVDPL can provide you with a variety of books featuring detectives and their cases for your solving delight.
Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer
Minneapolis local television reporter Riley Spartz suspects a serial killer is behind two murder cases of women named Susan, strangled on November 19 one year apart. As Riley delves further, she finds there are other dead Susans that fit the pattern. At the same time, Riley’s working on exposing a bad veterinarian doing scam pet cremations
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The author, a Swedish journalist, wrote three books before he died in 2005. In this title, the first of the trilogy, Henrik Vanger, an aging and wealthy businessman, hires Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist and freelance private investigator, to investigate the disappearance of his 16-year-old grandniece, Harriet over 30 years ago. The girl of the title, however, isn’t Harriet but Lisbeth Salander, a 24-year-old computer hacker with a photographic memory, a violent temper and some serious intimacy issues. Salander teams with Blomkvist to solve the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
A sort of pre-pubescent Miss Marple, Flavia de Luce is eleven years old, the youngest of three daughters in the de Luce family living with their widower father, Colonel de Luce, in a rundown mansion in rural England. The summer of 1950 hasn’t offered up anything out of the ordinary for Flavia: bicycle explorations around the village, relentless battles with her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, and brewing up poisonous concoctions in their home’s Victorian chemistry lab. However, one early morning Flavia finds a red-headed stranger lying in the cucumber patch and watches him take his dying breath. Flavia at once determines that she will unmask the killer.
Deadly Slipper by Michelle Wan
Bede Dunn, an orchid enthusiast, disappeared almost twenty years ago while on a hiking holiday in the Dordogne area of France. Her twin sister Mara now lives there, and has never stopped trying to find out the truth of what happened to her. Mara finds an old camera in a junk shop with a roll of film in it, which when developed, turns out to be many pictures of orchids. Believing the roll of film documents Bede's last hike, Mara takes the pictures to Julian Wood, an English expert on orchids also living in the area. Julian is reluctant to get drawn into this seemingly hopeless quest, but the last exposure on the film is irresistible to him -- an unknown species of Lady's Slipper Orchid. If discovered, it might be the key to botanical fame.
-Vicki Booth is a NVDPL librarian
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