In this heat, all I can do is sit in the AC (or, ideally, by a body of water) and read mystery novels. What mysteries should I add to my book pile?

Question

Jess · Answer

The Judas Window (John Dickson Carr): Carr specialized in just one type of mystery: the so-called "impossible crime." A person is murdered while alone in a locked room, or under view of witnesses, or in the middle of a snow-covered field. If you like detective stories with excellent fair-play puzzles and lively, if sometimes shallow, characterization, you should check him out. The Judas Window is a great place to start!

Jess · Answer

She Walks At Night (Seishi Yokomizo): What if Agatha Christie had been trained by Edgar Allan Poe? Yokomizo's mysteries combine the fair play detective novel structure with an atmosphere of Grand Guignol. I snap up every mystery featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the series detective, as soon as it's translated. You can read these in any order, but She Walks At Night is a great and characteristic place to start.

even*cleveland · Answer

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey: Well-behaved, middle-aged Lucy Pym has become a minor celebrity after publishing a book of pop psychology:

"She read her first book on psychology out of curiosity, because it seemed to her an interesting sort of thing; and she read all the rest to see if they were just as silly. By the time she had read thirty-seven books on the subject, she had evolved ideas of her own on psychology; at variance, of course, with all thirty-seven volumes read to date. In fact, the thirty-seven volumes seemed to her so idiotic and made her so angry that she sat down there and then and wrote reams of refutal. Since one cannot talk about psychology in anything but jargon, there being no English for most of it, the reams of refusal read very learnedly indeed."

An old school friend who once stuck up for a bullied Lucy ("Lucy had gone home and enjoyed jam roll-poly instead of throwing herself in the river") is now the head of a women's physical education college (shades of a down-market Gaudy Night). She asks Lucy to come and give a talk about her book, and Lucy prolongs her stay, wrapped up in the world of the school, its rigor and rituals, and the personalities of the teachers and students as they prepare for graduation. Then, as the pages dwindle and the reader, perhaps baffled by the fact that this book has been billed as a murder mystery, is lulled, something shocking happens. Lucy's psychological insight is put to the test, and here is where Tey becomes a slight-of-hand artist, pulling off a satisfying, gasp-eliciting finale in a scant few pages, deftly turning the story from one thing into another. A mystery unlike any other, really, and a sly commentary on self-appointed experts. You gotta stick with this one til the end; it's not what you think.

Hannah Harvey · Answer

Dublin Murder Squad Mysteries: Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad books are some of my absolute favorites. Rich sense of place, actually interesting characters; intricate and unguessable stories, and a sprinkle of the paranormal. French’s stories are made richer and thornier by her depictions of class, gentrification, generational conflict and a changing Ireland…but at the end of the day, they’re murder mysteries you’ll devour in an afternoon.

xdudx · Answer

The Secret History

Rita Zwiefel-Macdonald · Answer

And Then There Were None: my favorite Agatha Christie!