Articles in it’s a mystery
It’s a Mystery: “Half of the future is buried in the past”
Two seductive thrillers: one starring a fearless female cop, the other a boatload of washed-up MI5 spies.
It’s a Mystery: “Never share intelligence you don’t need to share”
In a duo of new thrillers – one a debut, the other by a practiced hand – two tough, enterprising female FBI agents add new twists to the template first popularized by Agent Clarice Starling in “The Silence of the Lambs”
It’s a Mystery: “The most successful criminals don’t look the part”
Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs, is a dazzling debut that deserves a place as a benchmark of the crime-thriller genre
It’s a Mystery: “To the dead we owe only truth”
Watching the Dark, the latest in Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks series, shows the master crime writer at the top of his form.
It’s a Mystery: “Life is what happens to ‘trust no one’”
Dan Fesperman’s The Double Game is a complex literary novel of intrigue that makes spy fiction a central character, “doubling” the reading pleasure.
It’s A Mystery: “Three things that come without asking: fear, love and jealousy.”
A city in northern England and a remote Scottish island are appropriately bleak settings to launch two impressive new series.
It’s a Mystery: “The only way a man learns the true spirit of a rock is to stub his toe on it”
William Kent Krueger and Steve Hamilton, authors of two critically acclaimed series, have winning new detective novels. Irma Heldman reviews.
It’s a Mystery: “Nobody escaped the desire for vengeance. Nobody.”
The seventeenth Lee Child is vintage Jack Reacher and the eighth Louise Penny is, as always, compelling and charismatic
It’s a Mystery: “No one is infallible or invisible”
A rare film is the centerpiece of Syndrome E, a cutting-edge, mesmerizing thriller.
It’s a Mystery: “Every man has his price”
Two scalpel-sharp political thrillers that mark the welcome return of the thoroughly winning, charismatic protagonists: Charlie Muffin and Joe DeMarco.
It’s a Mystery: “A good detective assumes nothing”
Cop to Corpse, the 12th in Peter Lovesey’s Detective Supt. Peter
Diamond series, finds the master at the top of his form.
It’s a Mystery: “Life is an ever-unfolding panoply of marvels”
Carsten Stroud’s Niceville is a wildly edgy thriller with the heart of a dark comedy–our resident mystery maven reviews
It’s a Mystery: “The world is a great honeycombed thing”
In Nick Harkaway’s altogether remarkable novel Angelmaker, blistering gangster noir meets Rabelaisian comedy
A Talent for Deception
Agatha Christie has received praise from wide and varied corners, and mystery columnist Irma Heldman adds to the chorus with this retrospective on the life and work of the Queen of Crime.
It’s a Mystery: “He’s the gray cardinal of the Kremlin”
The Silent Oligarch is a smashing debut thriller that has Chris Morgan Jones assuming the le Carré mantle in his own very original way
It’s a Mystery: “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery”
P.D. James takes on Jane Austen: a match made in elite whodunit heaven.
It’s a Mystery: “Small clues save you. Small errors kill.”
Carte Blanche is bestselling author Jeffrey Deaver’s new take on James Bond—bringing Agent 007 into the post-9/11 age.
It’s a Mystery: “A Father’s No Shield for His Child”
A gripping thriller, the debut collaborative work from a duo of Danish writers, is the first in a trilogy you won’t soon forget.
It’s A Mystery: “He had never tried to hide from himself his taste for the hazard of sin.”
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A Death in Summer is the fourth and best addition to the literate, elegant mystery series by Benjamin Black, the pen name of an award-winning author.
It’s A Mystery: “This was either an accident, murder or an act of nature.”
A promising new series is launched with a thoroughly captivating, quirky mystery set well off the beaten path, in a tiny village in Southern Thailand.
It’s A Mystery: “God was not an intelligence officer.”
David Ignatius writes superb novels of espionage from the perspective of the consummate insider. The latest is Bloodmoney.
It’s A Mystery: “He’s Satan in the skin of Everyman.”
In the crowded field of new thrillers, John Verdon’s Shut Your Eyes Tight is right up there with the very best and not to be missed.
It’s A Mystery: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
The seventh in Craig Johnson’s award-winning Sheriff Walt Longmire series, Hell Is Empty proves that when it comes to putting a contemporary spin on the lore of the old West, few writers do it better.
It’s a Mystery: “No person is without a shadow”
Kurt Wallander’s touching swan song shows why his creator Henning Mankell is an acknowledged master of the police procedural.
It’s a Mystery: “A spy causes far more trouble when he’s caught”
The premise of this elegantly wrought thriller puts a chilling new spin on the notorious British spy ring, “The Cambridge Five.”
It’s a Mystery: “Time ages a person’s soul”
Irma Heldman reviews Taylor Stevens’ “The Informationist” and concludes that not since “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” has there been a debut novel like it
It’s a Mystery: “As My Whimsy Takes Me”
“The Attenbury Emeralds” is the third novel by Jill Paton Walsh to bring Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, Mervyn Bunter, and their companions back to vividly realized life.
It’s a Mystery: “As we say in the trade, we’re going in barefoot”
John le Carré’s new work is an elegant espionage novel, part Hitchcock, post-Jack Bauer — the kind they almost don’t make any more.
It’s a Mystery: “There’s nothing, nothing on earth as dumb as a teenage boy”
Dennis Tafoya’s second crime novel, “The Wolves of Fairmount Park,” confirms that he is a brilliant new voice with a finely tuned modern noir sensibility.
It’s a Mystery: “Every kidnapper who ever did a snatch says no cops!”
In S.J. Rozan’s “On the Line” the irresistible P.I. partners in crime, Bill Smith and Lydia Chin, unwittingly enter into a high stakes game of cat and mouse with a psychopath.
It’s a Mystery: “After all is said and done, we’re just dust”
James Lee Burke’s 18th novel featuring his slightly crazy, completely charismatic Cajun cop, Dave Robicheaux, may just be his best.
It’s A Mystery: “Truth is the daughter of time”
The first two novels of Nicola Upson’s highly promising, thoroughly engaging series stars the great mystery writer Josephine Tey as a sleuth she herself might have invented
It’s A Mystery: “His job was to save her life”
The final book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, leaves no doubt that Lisbeth Salander, his punk hacker protagonist, has no equal in the annals of crime fiction
It’s A Mystery: “Death, it seems, is taking her own sweet time”
Norman Green’s Sick Like That features Alessandra “Al” Martillo, a sassy, sexy, edgy, endearing female P.I. whose turf is the mean streets of Brooklyn.
It’s a Mystery: “Motive is the mercury of any case”
31 Bond Street, Ellen Horan’s debut novel, is a compelling reconstruction of mid-nineteenth century New York and one of its most sensational murders.
It’s a Mystery: “Three things come unbidden: fear, love, and jealousy”
In her latest novel, False Mermaid, Erin Hart once again connects an ancient Celtic crime to a thoroughly modern mystery.
It’s a Mystery: “A violin is always female”
There is not a false note in Paganini’s Ghost, Paul Adam’s superbly calibrated mystery that unfolds around the intrigue generated by a priceless instrument and its keepers.
It’s A Mystery: “Sometimes the fake relics are more valuable than the real.”
Lou Berney in his fast and funny debut novel, Gutshot Straight, owes more than a little to Elmore Leonard, in the best of all possible ways. As for Elmore Leonard’s latest, Road Dogs, the master is in top form.
It’s A Mystery: “The deity who kills for pleasure will also heal”
Louise Penny’s newest novel, The Brutal Telling, plunges Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the star of the famed homicide department of the Sûreté du Quebec, into the darkest, most disturbing case of his career. Irma Heldman goes north of the border.
It’s a Mystery: “Sooner or later, everybody pays”
Irma Heldman reviews The Ghosts of Belfast, Stuart Neville’s grand Irish thriller debut in which the anti-hero, Gerry Fegan, a former IRA hitman, is “touched” as in crazy, and long ago would have been given the death sentence if they’d had anyone with the moxie to kill him.
It’s A Mystery: Mum’s Always The Word
Red to Black, reports Irma Heldman, is a superb debut novel of espionage set in post-glasnost Russia. Its author Alex Dryden is a pseudonymous British journalist with many years experience on the Russian scene—a fact that only serves to heighten the chilling reality behind the riveting read.
It’s A Mystery: “Men engaged in warfare are all ghosts in the making”
From Charles Todd, author of the critically acclaimed Ian Rutledge series, comes A Duty to the Dead, introducing Bess Crawford, a World War I nurse, who is feisty, fearless, and fascinating. Irma Heldman joins Crawford on her inaugural adventure.
It’s a Mystery: History Plays for Keeps
In Dan Fesperman’s meticulously crafted World War II thriller, The Arms Maker of Berlin, he opens up old war chests and lets the genies of the past wreak havoc upon the present. Irma Heldman is on the case.
It’s a Mystery: With Caviar Comes Money
Meet Artie Cohen, a Russian Jewish cop with a conscience. In Reggie Nadelson’s Londongrad, he’s got the weight of the world on one shoulder and New York crime on the other. Irma Heldman follows his travels in the latest “It’s a Mystery.”
It’s a Mystery: “She has a bag full of gold just like Pippi Longstocking”
They’re back! Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire marks the return of Mikael Blomkvist, the intrepid investigative journalist, and his sidekick Lisbeth Salander, the world-class punk hacker. Irma Heldman is on their trail.
“You can change your name…your job description… But really, nothing changes.”
With The Tourist, Olen Steinhauer takes his place in the panoply of classic spy fiction—at the very top with Deighton, Greene, and Le Carré. Irma Heldman is on the inside and tells all.
It’s A Mystery: “Ah, what the stage lost when I opted for the police”
Donna Leon’s eighteenth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery About Face has Irma Heldman once again seduced by the witty, erudite Venetian cop with a passion for ancient philosophers, modern women, elegant food, and the constant need to make sense out of the often senseless law.
It’s a Mystery: “I’ve got a mind like a comic book”
Bernie Gunther is back! In the newest incarnations of Philip Kerr’s crime series, the charismatic, cynical P.I.—more ready with a ribald wisecrack than a gun—has survived the decadent dog days of the Weimar Republic only to get down and dirty on the mean streets of Munich. Irma Heldman tags along after him.
It’s A Mystery: “Don’t be so sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be”
Dashiell Hammett’s daughter, Josephine Hammett Marshall, hand picked the very talented, three-time Edgar winner Joe Gores to write Spade & Archer, the prequel to The Maltese Falcon. The result, Irma Heldman says, surely has Hammett smiling among the “angels.”
It’s a Mystery: The Trouble with Harry
Norwegian Jo Nesbø, a musician, songwriter and economist, is also one of Europe’s most acclaimed crime writers who, to date, has given us two thrillers that are beautifully spun and deeply evocative. Veteran mystery maven Irma Heldman explores the latest hit from Scandinavia.
It’s a Mystery: Imaginative Eyes
It was a year full of fine additions to the genre, but according to regular “It’s a Mystery” columnist Irma Heldman, two among them were decidedly the cream of the crop. One is a first and one a twenty-first!
It’s a Mystery: All Hail the Queen
With this cheery account of the reigning royalty of murder mysteries, P.D. James, Irma Heldman inaugurates her monthly mystery column in these webpages. Irma once delighted fans of her “On the Docket” column under the pen-name O.L. Bailey, and Open Letters proudly welcomes her back to the beat she made her own!
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