Best Mystery & Thriller Books 2022

Armchair detectives, this book has your name on it. Disappearances, unsolved murders, justice — this thriller has it all. As with a true crime podcast, there’s no lack of wanting to hear and read such stories. Unpleasant, likely so, but when well written, as is the case of All Good People Here, we are allowed to skate that line of imagination and reality. Because don’t all of us just really want it to work out in the end? Authors such as Flowers help us with that hurdle.

We’ve been big fans of Richard Osman since the first book in his Thursday Murder Club series landed. It has been our joy and surprise to get an annual follow up each year. The Bullet That Missed is the third book in the series, and delight, mystery and amateur crime solving abounds in the Coopers Chase retirement community. If we could only be part of ONE club, it would be the Thursday Murder Club. Someone please give us the secret handshake. In the meantime, we have book three.

It is no exaggeration to say we found The Butcher and The Wren by Alaina Urquhart to be the most intense cat-and-mouse thriller you’ll read this fall. The turn of the first page will send you to the next page. Read & repeat in one sitting.

Don Winslow writes epic crime novels that cover as much ground as a Martin Scorsese film. We are thrilled to know that City on Fire is the first in a new series. We told you he was bold!

We had to wait three years between Kruger’s 17th and 18th books in the Cork O’Connor series. Luckily, we’ve got the next in the series now! A year later. We’ve said this before and we will continue to say it, “the Cork O’Connor series is intriguing, heartfelt, and empathetic.” Which is to say, jump in at any point (start here!) and know you are in good hands with the works of William Kent Kruger.

In this sequel to Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her, Andrea Oliver is now a US Marshall. If you were not familiar with Oliver’s fierce determination to do the right thing then start here with Girl, Forgotten. You will finish the read remembering her, and then immediately jump back to Pieces of Her.

Known as the foremost director of atmospheric thriller films, this is Mann’s first crime novel, co-written with Edgar Award-winning writer, Meg Gardiner. To this day, images from the 1995 movie, Heat, with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, still linger. That resonance permeates in Heat 2. Put your headphones on and crank up the guitar orchestra soundtrack as you glide through the streets of LA.

A debut for the many fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, The Curious Incident of the Dog in Nighttime and The Thursday Murder Club, readers must be prepared to run around and solve this fatal mystery with the unflappable Molly Gray. For every curveball thrown her way, maid Molly keeps the life rules of her dear departed grandmother at heart and uses them to help solve the untimely murder of a guest. The characters around the Regency Grand Hotel would push anyone to their limits, so her subsequent suspect list is endless. Imperturbable Molly will take you by the hand as you solve this fun, fast and endlessly sweet mystery together!

Some authors make us wait a year in between books. Others like to extend that wait. Lucy Foley is back after 2020’s The Guest List.

The Paris Apartment is definitely worth the time in between so you can savor every moment of mystery as you did with The Guest List and The Hunting Party. On second thought – we can’t wait!!!!!

We confess, we got a little spoiled in 2021 with the release of not one but TWO Penny penned books. A year is complete when we know we are going to spend some time with Armand Gamache. A World of Curiosities continues Penny’s empathetic investigation into the human condition. We are in good hands with Armand Gamache and the residents of Three Pines.