Category: Reviews

Pegasus
January 6, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Lydia Chin and Bill Smith have been private eyes for many years. (The first book in the series, China Trade, appeared in 1994).  They have a seasoned partnership, and here take on the case of a man accused of murdering a nurse in a major New York City hospital. The nurse has been serving on a union negotiating committee with the hospital administration, which is playing hardball while trying to avert a strike. The accused, an effervescently upbeat morgue assistant, claims he’s innocent, but the NYPD detective assigned to the case is under pressure to close the case quickly and has little patience with an interfering pair of private investigators working for the defense. But it doesn’t take long for Lydia and Bill to uncover several unsavory activities going on at the hospital that may have a bearing on the case.

Continue reading “First Do No Harm by S. J. Rozan”

Soho
Published January 6, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Abby Rosso has bootstrapped her way from poverty and foster care to an advanced psychology degree and a tenuous position as a counselor at a private school on the North Shore of Chicago, where her son Benjamin has free tuition. She’s barely making ends meet, and it all starts to crumble when two girls are found dead and Benjamin becomes a focus of the investigation. Like many adolescents, Benjamin has become a moody, sarcastic, and mostly uncommunicative young man. But his problems aren’t simply with his single parent. He has few friends and feels like an outcast at a school where the other students can afford the clothes and travel that are out of reach for him. Abby has begun to see personality traits in her son that remind her of her estranged brother whose prison term keeps being extended thanks to his violent outbursts. Soon she discovers Benjamin was more involved with the dead girls than she had realized, and he has been secretly communicating with his toxic uncle. Can she protect her son? Can she trust him?

Continue reading “What Boys Learn by Andromeda Romano-Lax”

Zibby 
Published December 2, 2025
Reviewed by Mary-Jane Oltarzewski

The Gallagher Place begins with a solid premise: In 2018, over Thanksgiving weekend, three affluent Manhattanites – adult siblings Nate, Marlowe, and Henry Fisher – are visiting their family’s country home in upstate New York when they discover a murdered man on the property. The subsequent investigation rocks the rural community, and raises questions about the unsolved disappearance of a local girl, twenty years earlier. Sixteen-year-old Nora Miller and middle child Marlowe were teenage besties who shared a room in the Fisher house just about every weekend; since she vanished, the town has never stopped gossiping, and the Fisher family, especially Marlowe, has never been the same.

Continue reading “The Gallagher Place by Julie Doar”

Crime Fiction Review was created in April 2025 after Reviewing the Evidence, a site that was founded shortly after the turn of the century, went to a well-deserved retirement. (You can visit its final issue at the Internet Archive.) We thought it was worthwhile to continue the tradition of reviewing worthy (or not-so-worthy) books with an even hand to help readers find mysteries they might have otherwise overlooked.

Since our launch in April we’ve reviewed 88 books here.  Some trivia:

• Altogether we read 29,560 pages. The average number of pages of the books we reviewed was 336.
• The longest book was 656 pages. You may not be surprised to learn the author was Elizabeth George. The shortest was a novella by Elmore Leonard who famously advised writers to leave out the “hooptedoodle.”
• Though a majority of the books were set in the US, UK, and Canada, we visited lots of places, including Fiji, Pakistan, and Ukraine (twice!)  For two books we relied on translators.
• A majority of authors we reviewed this year were women – 58. Four books were coauthored.
• December was our skimpiest month for reviews.

It seems publishers don’t release a lot of mysteries in December. But never fear – there’s a flood coming in the next few months. And we will try to help you keep afloat as we tell you about books that might be worth your while.

Sourcebooks Landmark
Published December 30, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Twelve-year-old Miv is having a rough time. Her mother has gone silent, sunk into paralyzing depression, and often leaves home for a “rest,” leaving her aunt to see to things at home while the neighbors whisper. There’s talk of moving away from Yorkshire, which would separate Miv from her best and only friend, Sharon. On top of that, the news is full of murders that the police can’t seem to solve. The Yorkshire Ripper, they are calling him. If the authorities can’t get anywhere, maybe it’s time for Miv to find the culprit by observing her neighbors and making lists of suspicious things they do. Besides, if she brings Sharon into the investigation, they can have an adventure together. Before long, though the Ripper proves elusive, they’re uncovering some unexpected truths about their community.

Continue reading “The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey”

Our list this month is a fairly short one, but we hope there’s something on it that will hit the spot. With winter setting in, we all need a big pile of books to read, preferably beside a fire and possibly with a cat in the lap. Here’s hoping your To Be Read pile has some excellent mysteries on it.

Mark de Castrique, Desperate Spies – “The author weaves an impressive tapestry of murder, politics, spies, dueling agencies, and technology related to national security.” (Ruth Castelberry)

Donna Freitas, Her One Regret – “Described as a ‘feminist thriller,’ this novel explores the subject of motherhood and the demands it makes on women, not just in terms of what it takes to care for a baby, but the expectation that mother love will overcome all the sacrifices a woman makes.” (Barbara Fister)

Michael Connelly, The Proving Ground – “The Proving Ground is fast-paced and, despite the heavy emphasis on matters legal and technical, intriguingly character-driven…The question at the center of this very contemporary story is not about the killing, but the coding.” (Mary-Jane Oltarzewski)

Laura Griffin, Innocence Road – “Prolific author Griffin uses some familiar materials in this story: a detective reluctantly comes home and uncovers secrets; a single murder investigation leads to a series of crimes; the deaths of marginalized women are overlooked by a system that doesn’t take their lives seriously. Here, these elements are handled capably, with a prickly, determined protagonist whose dysfunctional family provides depth as she pursues justice.” (Barbara Fister)

John Ajvide Lindqvist, The Writing in the Water – “The protagonist pair bear strong resemblances to Stieg Larsson’s heroes – only Mikhail Blomqvist has been transformed into a middle-aged female crime novelist and Lisbeth Salander has turned into a young man with a similar difficulty connecting to others and a traumatic past involving a brutal childhood and incarceration at an insane asylum, where he was tortured by a perverted psychiatrist.” (Barbara Fister)

Peggy Townsend, The Botanist’s Assistant – “This feel-good cozy has a protagonist who might be described as a hybrid of the protagonists of The Maid and Lessons in Chemistry.” (Barbara Fister)

Julia Spencer-Fleming, At Midnight Comes the Cry – “It has been five years since readers have had a new mystery featuring the Reverend Clare Fergusson and her recently retired police chief husband Russ Van Alstyne. They are back, with a new baby and a rip-roarer of a plot that pairs the warmth of Christmas in small town upstate New York with a dangerous investigation into an extremist cell planning something violent.” (Barbara Fister)

Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb – “This delightful legal mystery, the second in the series following A Case of Mice and Murder (2025)  is both cozy and intelligent. The author, like her hero, is a KC in the Inner Temple, and has used the unusual setting and its historic peculiarities to excellent effect.” (Barbara Fister)