Mindy Carlson

Clever and witty. Assassins Anonymous is different take on the “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in,” trope. An assassin, Mark, has joined an AA-like group in order to retire from his chosen profession. It’s fun to see him defuse deadly situations while keeping his vow to not take another life, but it’s the mystery behind the cavalcade of assassins showing up to take him out that had me obsessed.

Just as in Stephen King’s The Shining, we follow Annie Shaw’s slow descent into madness (an OCD crisis) as she wrestles with her mentally ill mother’s death and the growing distance between herself and her teenage daughter. This story is twisty and tense as Annie’s artistic benefactor suddenly disappears and everyone close to Annie suddenly becomes a suspect. Read this one with every light in the house on.

This is one I cannot wait to see on the big screen, should Hollywood come calling. Shane Collins (Russell Crowe or bust, Hollywood) is a spy at the end of his career. When he catches wind of an uprising against the monarchy, he seizes one last chance to prove he’s still got what it takes to serve his country. A trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, sending Shane spinning and making him more desperate than ever to come out of this alive.

I love a present-day mystery that echoes a cold case. Is this a copy-cat? Or is this a murderer who’s been laying in wait for the perfect time to finish what they’ve started? Raisa Susanto is a forensic linguist for the FBI, bringing a refreshing take on the investigator role, who finds the simple case she’s been assigned become something much more twisty and complex. And the twist at the end caught me by complete surprise.

I’ve been a fan of Laurie R. King for years. Folly remains a perennial fav, but there’s something undeniably wonderful about her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. The Lantern’s Dance is one of her best yet. Gripping swashbuckling action and clever puzzles sink the reader in to the story and left me a little sad when I hit The End. And it adds to the legend of Sherlock Holmes in surprising and very satisfying ways.