Mystery

YA-style mystery ‘Sun Down Motel’ (2020) floats off like a ghost

Simone St. James’ “The Sun Down Motel” (2020) has a structure that’s almost like cheating. Twenty-ish Viv investigates cold cases in 1982 while working at

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‘Hallmarked Man’: For the love of mystery, and for the love of love

J.K. Rowling (under the pen name Robert Galbraith) continues to push the boundary of how involved a mystery novel can be with “The Hallmarked Man”

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‘E is for Evidence’ (1988) that a more evocative tale could’ve been told

In “E is for Evidence” (1988), there’s evidence that Sue Grafton underwrites key parts of the mystery. While this fifth Kinsey Millhone book has compelling

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‘Conjuring’ saga applies wallpaper as fast as it peels in ‘Last Rites’

The Smurl family home in “The Conjuring: Last Rites” includes peeling wallpaper in the stairwell, an accidental metaphor for the way the film uses top-shelf

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‘D is for Deadbeat’ (1987) a rather downbeat Millhone entry

“D is for Deadbeat” (1987), and also for “downbeat,” in Sue Grafton’s fourth Kinsey Millhone mystery. The private eye spends her whole time on the

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‘C is for Corpse’ (1986), and for character building, in third Millhone book

“C is for Corpse” (1986), appropriately, has the most Character of the Kinsey Millhone series up to this point. Kinsey becomes comfortable in her own

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‘Echoes of Guilt’ is like a Lifetime movie without an editor

“Echoes of Guilt” (February, paperback and digital), by L.T. Ryan with Laura Chase, is one of hundreds or maybe thousands of modern books that serves

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‘Murdaugh: Death in the Family’ makes true crime chillingly personal

“Murdaugh: Death in the Family” (Wednesdays, Hulu) is the very definition of a mystery where you peel back layers. It can be enjoyed either by

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Grafton doesn’t bungle sophomore Kinsey novel ‘B is for Burglar’ (1985)

For Dr. Nick Riviera of “The Simpsons,” “B” is for bargain, but for the second book in the Kinsey Millhone mystery series, “B is for

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‘Badlands’ lands as another good novel from Preston & Child

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s “Badlands” (June, hardcover) is comfortingly familiar: a New Mexico badlands setting, a weird mystery, and anthropologist Nora Kelly and young

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