Mystery books with something extra

April 16, 2024 5:48 AM

I love books that might be described as "mystery plus." That is, they work as clever, well-constructed, and fair mysteries... but they have a distinctive additional attraction on top of the mystery. For example, The Tuesday Murder Club is a mystery + unusually charming characters and humor. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is mystery + {SPOILER REDACTED}. Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone and West Heart Kill are mystery + narrative self awareness. Can you recommend other examples?

Feel free to say a few words about what the plus is, but I'd be grateful if you could avoid spoilers. If in doubt, I'd rather you err on the side of vagueness (as you can probably tell from the fact that I have been vague about Evelyn Hardcastle even though the thing that makes the book unusual is revealed very early on.)

posted by yankeefog to Writing & Language (38 answers total)

It's out of print, but I really enjoyed Three Bags Full. Coincidentally, I just mentioned the book in the sheep thread on The Blue.

Short version is that the book is a mystery where a flock in Ireland tries to solve the death of their own shepherd.
posted by terrapin at 5:52 AM on April 16 [2 favorites]

I love this question and am looking forward to other suggestions! Some things I've liked that I think fit the bill (with the "mystery + [___]" filled in below). None of these should be spoilers, i.e. they are

- Janice Hallett's The Appeal or The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels: ...+ modern epistolary format (the novels are completely narrated through letters, emails, texts, messages, Whatsapps, etc.) She's also written The Twyford Code but I don't think it's as good as the two I mentioned.

- Cara Hunter's Murder in the Family: somewhat similar to Hallett, it's ...+ presented as a true crime documentary script, as in you're reading what is purported to be a documentary. Not quite as good as Hallett in my view, but still very enjoyable

- Anthony Horowitz tends to write in this vein as well, with his Magpie Murders being a ...+ book-in-a-book format.

(If I may make an anti-recommendation, I thought that Gareth Rubin's The Turnglass would be this, but I was pretty disappointed. Also, I've just noticed that all my recommendations are British, but this is just a coincidence I think! I am not British.)
posted by andrewesque at 6:00 AM on April 16 [1 favorite]

It's not quite what you asked, but I just finished The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett, which is a fantasy novel that is a straight up murder mystery and it was really excellent.

Seconding Janice Hallett's The Appeal as the answer to the question you're looking for--the "plus" is the very clever epistolary structure, plus the small town politics.
posted by gideonfrog at 6:11 AM on April 16 [2 favorites]

I think the Louise Penny books fit this. Mystery plus art, charming and complex characters described with warmth, and some humor. The audio books are also exceptionally narrated.
posted by onebyone at 6:16 AM on April 16 [4 favorites]

It's possible this won't meet your criteria because it's kind of an inversion of your formula (in that it's not super firmly rooted in the mystery genre or written by a mystery writer), but please consider giving The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco a try. It's postmodern fiction about, uh, literary theory and biblical analysis? Semiotics? The nature of truth and reality? But it's also a murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the 1300s. It's good.
posted by pullayup at 6:46 AM on April 16 [6 favorites]

Station Eternity is mystery + space/sci-fi + playing around with mystery tropes. Mur Lafferty, the author, has written other space mysteries like Six Wakes.
posted by jeoc at 6:46 AM on April 16 [1 favorite]

I can think of a few romance/mystery series that I think are Fair Play, but it's been long enough since I read them that I can't say that for sure. Suzanne Enoch's Samantha Jellicoe series is one that comes to mind. Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation is another. I'm not certain for either of them, though.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:55 AM on April 16

My favourite book of this type is The Unburied by Charles Palisser.

It is a Victorian murder mystery with a parallel, unsolved mystery from the 17th century casting its shadows into the present day of the novel.

I really like the way Palisser kind of invites the reader to solve the mystery alongside the novel's narrator. You end up picking up on things the narrator either fails to notice or studiously ignores because of his own issues.

Charles Palisser's mystery novels are like this - very unreliable narrators and a strong suggestion of a parallel narrative thread occuring just below the surface of the novel.
posted by unicorn chaser at 7:01 AM on April 16 [3 favorites]

* Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar novels, because of the way the narrator is described. The first is Thus Was Adonis Murdered.
* Lindsey Davis's Falco (and later Flavia Albia) books, because of the ancient Roman setting.
* Sayers, Murder Must Advertise, because of the setting in an advertising agency.
* Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce series, because of the voice of the child narrator.
* Christie's Death Comes as the End, because of the ancient Egyptian setting, based on surviving letters.
* Celia Lake's In the Cards, country house mystery plus magic.
* The new novel by KJ Charles, Death in the Spires, because of the focus on class, the quality of the writing and the homage to classic university detective fiction.
* Alice Bell's Grave Expectations, because of the characteristics of the detective's sidekick.
* Katherine Addison's Witness for the Dead, because of the world-building - you might need to read The Goblin Emperor first, but that does also have a mystery.
* Jo Walton's Farthing, because of the alternate history setting and the quality of the writing.
*Alice Degan's From All False Doctrine, because it is not like anything else.
* Early novels by Michael Innes, because of the surreal touches, the literary allusions and the quality of the writing (Hamlet, Revenge!, Appleby's End, The Daffodil Affair).
* Sujata Massey's Perveen Mistry series, because of the setting.
* Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, because of the historical mystery (there is no contemporary mystery in the book).
* Nicola Upson's mysteries, for the character of Josephine Tey.
* Gillian Linscott's Nell Bray series, because of the character's voice and the insight into the women's suffrage movement.
* Elly Griffiths's Ruth Galloway series, for the archaeology and the present tense.
posted by paduasoy at 8:05 AM on April 16 [9 favorites]

An Instance of the Fingerpost is a mystery with history of the scientific revolution/enlightenment, including some major figures in that period as characters.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:07 AM on April 16 [5 favorites]

The City & The City by China Miéville is murder-mystery + weird-alternate-universe-fuckery (I could be more specific, but piecing together the rules of the world as you read is part of the fun).

Quarantine by Greg Egan is missing-person-mystery + hard sci-fi.
posted by mekily at 8:40 AM on April 16 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: I promise not to threadsit, but a couple of people have expressed uncertainty about suggesting books that might not traditionally be classified as mysteries. Just to clarify— that’s totally fine! The Name Of The Rose and The Tainted Cup are great suggestions, as are all the other answers so far. Thank you and keep ‘em coming!
posted by yankeefog at 8:48 AM on April 16

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Definitely fits the "mystery + unusually charming characters and humor" description!
posted by violetish at 8:58 AM on April 16 [1 favorite]

Katherine Addison's Cemeteries of Amalo books are mysteries in a fantasy setting where the mystery-solver has an unusual fantasy-type power which assists in solving the mysteries. The Goblin Emperor is the first book in this world and good for scene setting, and also contains a significant plot element involving solving/uncovering details of a crime, but it's a bit more generalist fantasy and a bit less explicitly mystery-focused than the other books set in the same world by the same author.
posted by terretu at 10:20 AM on April 16 [4 favorites]

Susan Juby's Helen Thorpe series (two books so far) features a former Buddhist nun now butler as the main character/ostensible inadvertent detective. Helen makes for a fun and interesting POV character, and it's both very charming and at times genuinely thought-provoking to see things from her perspective. She's definitely not focused on the same things your average mystery protagonist is, and her very calm and loving compassion makes for a neat twist on the genre. The books are overall pretty light and fun, and have definitely made me chuckle or laugh out loud.
posted by yasaman at 10:28 AM on April 16

The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson. It is a coming of age tale set in an Ireland peppered with Thin Places where the spirit world leaks through into a recognisable post-Tiger island with taxis, ringtones and tattoos. There is a hunt the archives, map the holy places mystery running through it. Librarians tend to shelve it in the Young Adult section. Cripes, YA must have quite the tolerance for the hum of violence - I blame The Hunger Games.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:01 AM on April 16

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke isn't a traditional mystery book but who the narrator is and why they are where they are and who they meet in the place where they are, are all mysteries. And it's hands down a brilliant book regardless of genre.

Also, the Thursday Next series by Jasper FForde is riotously funny, extremely charming, and utterly page turning. Mysteries to spare in that series.
posted by underclocked at 11:07 AM on April 16 [2 favorites]

Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne series is really good and fits the MysteryPlus category well.
posted by Morpeth at 12:09 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

My first thought was Tana French, who doesn't necessarily go heavily into other genres but features a lot of ambiguously supernatural elements and has a lot of "literary" elements. The Witch Elm in particular takes like 150 pages of a novel about living with brain damage before the (largely unrelated to brain injury) murder is discovered, The Secret Place is about a bunch of teen witch/superhero types through the context of a murder investigation related to them rather than a more typical fantasy thing, In The Woods does some spoilery stuff with the cold case and supernatural stuff, etc. Kate Atkinson also does that mystery-novel-as-a-structure-to-hang-a-litfic-novel-on thing, though she doesn't grab me quite as much.

Also, it's probably reached recommendation saturation at this point, but Tamsyn Muir's Gideon The Ninth has a lot going on but fundamentally is a science fiction epic told as a classic murder mystery, which sounds very relevant to what you're looking for. (I've only read the first two books, but be advised that the murder mystery part does not continue really, even though some of the promotional material and early parts of Harrow The Ninth suggest that it does.)

It's so ubiquitous in the murder mystery genre that I have to assume it's not really what you're looking for, but there's loads of series/authors that are like "mystery + hobby": Dick Francis does mystery + horse racing, Rita Mae Brown does mystery + cats, I have a book called The Tell-Tale Tarte that's a mystery being investigated by a pastry chef and a Poe scholar that I bought just to covet its audacious title, there's no end to this stuff. I would definitely second that The Name of the Rose goes further than "mystery + historical setting" though.

Mystery romance is surely common; Laurie R. King's Holmes/Russell books are probably the most famous, but I have no idea if they're the best. Mystery sci-fi is certainly established as well; Asimov followed up I, Robot with some examples, of which I think The Caves of Steel was the first? (This even allows for "mystery where the character investigates their own death"; I've read that Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail does this, IIRC Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has it as a plot point, John Varley's "The Phantom of Kansas" (readable online but currently erroring out) has it as a plot point -- it's surely a full TVTropes article.)

Sorry, I'm getting carried away because I love this question! I'd have linked and googled more if I wasn't on mobile.
posted by dick dale the vampire at 12:38 PM on April 16 [2 favorites]

Another Katherine Addison recommendation – The Angel of the Crows is something of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but with angels, vampires, and werewolves.
posted by Lexica at 12:39 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

Oh, Neil Gaiman's Holmes/Lovecraft pastiche "A Study In Emerald" is available online, although do note it's a PDF.
posted by dick dale the vampire at 12:48 PM on April 16

It's more of a "spy plus" but I love the Fractured Europe books by Dave Hutchinson (starting with Europe in Autumn). It looks like a near-future spy story - in a shabby, splintering Europe, a young chef is recruited into a mysterious messenger service - but over the course of the first book, something much more large-scale and bizarre emerges. Could be more rambly than you're looking for.
posted by Socksmith at 1:04 PM on April 16

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon is a noir mystery set in an alternative history where Jewish refugees from World War II were relocated to Sitka Alaska and Israel didn't exist. It's a good mystery and a very interesting amount of world building.
posted by montag2k at 1:22 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk is something. It's a historical murder-mystery with some romance and also some lively discussion about philosophy and aesthetics. One of the various narrators is the colour red itself.
posted by ovvl at 2:03 PM on April 16

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a meditation on writing and literature, and a sort of gothic novel.
posted by polecat at 3:57 PM on April 16

I enjoyed Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk immensely. It's definitely a murder mystery, but the main character and narrator is this incredibly weird and compelling old lady whose amazing internal dialogue constantly caught me off guard.

The Bookman's Wake and its sequels are mystery plus antiquarian book stuff, which is always fun. And in keeping with some of the other dual-time-period ones (Palliser and Pears are great) try Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, which is a guy stuck in bed getting obsessed with a royal murder from centuries before and attempting to solve it.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:47 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

Oh man, checking the related questions reminded me about Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music, which is a sci-fi noir pastiche featuring genetically-engineered furries as a sort of societal underclass. Unfortunately I don't remember it well enough to say whether it's more "mystery that also does other things" or "other thing that's dressed up like a mystery", but in my memory the pastiche was satisfying and the furries were unsettling (in a good way [if you're into that]).
posted by dick dale the vampire at 5:52 PM on April 16 [3 favorites]

These are a bunch of classic series that, to me, have added appeal because of the excellent writing and spending time with enjoyable and familiar characters.

The Slough House (disowned London spies) books by Mick Herron.

All the Virgil Flowers books by John Sandford and many of the Lucas Davenport, Prey Series (particularly the more recent ones, and those featuring Davenport's daughter, Letty).

Nero Wolfe. Formulaic, but nothing like the comfort of following Archie Goodwin around.

Michael Connelly is a great writer and I love almost all of this Harry Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer and Rene Ballard novels. I listen to most of them and they were particularly great before Titus Welliver started reading (who apparently brags about not reading before the book before "performing" them ... ugh).

John Rain (Japanese-American spy/assassin) and Jack Reacher (pre-retirement of Lee Child), but YMMV with the macho violent types!
posted by pjenks at 6:16 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

The Squares of the City by John Brunner is not exactly a mystery. It's a story of political intrigue set in a fictional South American city. The action in the book parallels the moves of a famous tournament chess game.
posted by JonJacky at 6:55 PM on April 16

I find that for some classic mysteries, the period, locale, and atmosphere are the memorable parts. I can't recall the (often convoluted) plots of Raymond Chandler's novels, but I can't forget the sleazy, corrupt world of his detective's wealthy clients in the Los Angeles of the 1940s. Likewise, I don't remember the plot of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, but I still remember the violence of the labor troubles in that 1920s Montana mining town.
posted by JonJacky at 7:04 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

Also came here to recommend The Witch Elm by Tana French. When I read it, I spent a good chunk of the novel thinking it was one type of story, but then when I realized what French was really up to it changed my perspective of the narrative as a whole.
posted by panther of the pyrenees at 11:25 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. No one dies. This is one of my favorite books, not for the mystery (which is carefully plotted and satisfying) but for the larger story about the detective. I recommend this and its sequel Busman’s Honeymoon (someone dies in this one).
posted by Vatnesine at 5:24 AM on April 17 [6 favorites]

Fatherland by Robert Harris is a detective story set in an alternate history where Germany won World War 2.
posted by bq at 8:23 AM on April 17

Previously.
posted by azalea_chant at 1:47 PM on April 18 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, everybody! You’ve given me a lot of great suggestions. I’m looking forward to reading them just as soon as I finish rewriting my will inside this locked room—

[THE LIGHTS GO OUT. A SHOT IS FIRED.]
posted by yankeefog at 2:46 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]

Nth-ing Tana French. There's often a real psychological or sociological aspect to the plot that gets explored fairly deeply: the echoes of childhood trauma, social privilege, chosen family vs biological, being an outsider due to race or ethnicity... I'm currently reading her most recent one so I can't speak to that one, but I recommend The Likeness as an easy place to start. (If you want the backstory, you can read In the Woods first, but you don't need it.)
posted by slidell at 1:10 AM on April 23

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells: Murder mystery + science-fictional snarky, anxious security consultant who just wants to watch media. You probably have to read the previous 4 novellas in the series to appreciate it, but they're all excellent, and they also have some mystery elements.
posted by expialidocious at 3:38 PM on April 23

I recommend The Likeness as an easy place to start. (If you want the backstory, you can read In the Woods first, but you don't need it.)

Oh read ITW first! You don't need it but one of her greatest tricks (joys) is presenting the same character from the external and then the internal perspective.
posted by pjenks at 9:48 PM on April 24