Read a gritty, small-town detective series
Death in the Family — Tessa Wegert
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This week is going to be a double-hitter! This is one of the most under-rated detective series I’ve read in the past few years, and Wegert’s mystery setups and character building are the two reasons I cannot stop thinking about this series.
What to Read This Week
Death in the Family and The Dead Season by Tessa Wegert
What It’s About
Shana Merchant left her job as an NYPD detective more than a year ago, and she’s finally settling down into small-town life. She’s working at the local police station in upstate New York, and she’s content to deal with small, petty crimes and wants to ignore everything that happened to her back in NYC.
When Shana and her partner Tim get a call about a missing man on a private island in the middle of a nor’easter, they jump to head out to save him. But when they get to the island, the storm intensifies, trapping them there with the wealthy Sinclair family, a whole lot of blood, and a bunch of guilty-looking people, not to mention the still-missing man. And no one is safe.
This book feels in every way like a modern Agatha Christie, locked-room story, but has a backstory for the main character that’s much darker and more suspenseful than a traditional mystery. As the interviews and the storm ramp up, so does the tension, and Wegert’s storytelling is absolutely gripping as everything comes to a head.
Who Will Like It
This series is like if a big-time Criminal Minds–style investigator moved to a small coastal town and worked there instead. It’s got the darkness of the high-stakes crimes in the backstory with a main mystery focus in each book. I’m always a sucker for locked-room-style mysteries, and this is a less comedic version of Knives Out: all the family drama and conflict, minus Toni Collette.
I also really love this series in particular because of Shana Merchant, the main character. She’s got an intriguing and mysterious backstory that is unfolding over the course of the series, not just one book, and she’s a flawed and deeply traumatized character who is still trying to do the best she can. Plus her partner, Tim, has total golden retriever energy, which makes for a fun pair.
Next Up
I just started The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd, and I can already tell I’m going to fly through it and yell at anyone who tries to interrupt my reading time. And although it’s a Book of the Month pick this month, I don’t see nearly enough people talking about it, so I may soon become a louder cheerleader for it. It follows Nell Young, a disgraced cartographer, who discovers an odd map in her father’s possessions after his death, and soon she’s wrapped up in a weird case where everyone is after her and this singular map that has come into her possession.
What are you reading this week? Do you need a recommendation? I’d love to chat all things books in the comments!
More Books
Can’t get enough, or looking for a different recommendation? Browse the archives, or check out some popular past recommendations:
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