Nalini Singh brings an unusual pedigree to A Madness of Sunshine: she may be a fresh name to mystery readers, but the Fiji-born author has already racked up 30 New York Times bestsellers, shelves full of awards, and legions of ardent fans. Open the pages of her prior books, though, and you’re likely to find passionate tales involving vampires, shapeshifters, archangels, and psychics. Singh is a high priestess of paranormal romance and caused a stir when she revealed her new book was a mystery.

A Madness of Sunshine shows that Singh’s storytelling talents translate across genre. This atmospheric tale begins with concert pianist Anahera returning to her tiny hometown on the rugged West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, after many years of living an urban, creative life in London.

She’d never intended to live in Golden Cove again; it’s a place full of painful memories as well as old friends. Recuperating from the loss of her husband, and the betrayal revealed at his funeral, Anahera finds herself living in her mother’s old cabin near the sea. Will is a new cop in town, exiled from the city. When a vibrant young woman about to leave Golden Cove for her own adventures vanishes, Will and Anahera are caught up in a troubled community where memories of past tragedies resurface.

Is a killer lurking among them, or has danger arrived from the outside?

In A Madness of Sunshine, Singh adroitly shifts gears from paranormal romance to crime, crafting an immersive and near-claustrophobic sense of place as well as some fascinating characters that power an intriguing and twisting mystery. The primal nature of the West Coast environment, where human life is hemmed in by wilderness, is well portrayed, as are the personal demons Anahera and others are battling. While longtime Singh fans may miss the steamy sex or paranormal characters of her prior novels, mystery readers are likely to be well satisfied, and keen to see Singh return to the crime scene again in the future.

While Swedish authors may have dominated attention when the Scandi Crime Wave really took off more than a decade ago, in recent times it’s been the Icelandic, Finnish, and Norwegian authors who’ve particularly elevated and stretched what the rest of the world thinks of as Nordic Noir.

And in our mystery-loving world, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is undisputed royalty—a Viking crime queen. She takes readers deliciously into the darkness in her latest tale, Absolution, the third in her newer Children’s House series starring detective Huldar and child psychologist Freyja. A seemingly popular teenager in Iceland is abducted from the cinema where she works part-time, and in a chilling twist, her trauma is caught for all her Snapchat contacts to see as an increasingly disturbing series of videos are broadcast over social media. Her captor videos her begging for forgiveness.

Huldar is struggling with his superior and brings in Freyja to help interview the victim’s friends, and the pair soon discovers that the girl may not have been as well-liked as some claim. Then another teenager goes missing, and more video clips are sent. A body is found marked with the number two. How many victims will there be? Huldar and Freyja are faced with a dangerous killer and a complex case entwined with the disturbing sides of social media.

Sigurðardóttir sets herself high standards and delivers once more in a tale that addresses contemporary themes faced by teenagers and adults in a bleak story with plenty of tangled character relationships and an exquisite, slow-burn build that suits the wintry atmosphere.

When you’re investigating a murder, it’s often hard to tell who is telling the truth. Especially when one of the witnesses, who is also your client, has multiple personalities.

Isaiah Quintabe, known as IQ, is an unlicensed private investigator living in East Long Beach, California, who is forced into trying to help Christiana Byrne, the daughter of the biggest arms dealer on the West Coast, when she is accused of killing a man in her clothing shop. Used to helping neighbors find kidnapped dogs or stolen violins, he has no choice but to use his wits to try to solve the mystery if he wants to save those he loves. Unfortunately, none of Christiana’s personalities saw the crime, and not all of them are willing to cooperate.

While the murder is the catalyst of the story, Hi Five is far deeper than a whodunit. Relationships are at the heart of this book, from the awkward friendship between IQ and Dodson, a former gangster, to the complex and heart-wrenching love triangle of IQ and Stella, his current girlfriend, and Grace, the woman he’s never stopped loving.

Add to this an extremely nasty arms dealer who now wants to protect his daughter after causing the trauma that resulted in her shattered psyche, and even the most complicated murder seems easier to unravel than the bonds that tie people together.

While there is violence and action galore, the story also has unexpected moments of sweetness. Against a backdrop of racism, gunrunning, child abuse, and more, there is still hope that doing the right thing—no matter how late—may ultimately lead to redemption.

In her sixth madcap romp, full-time zookeeper and part-time amateur sleuth Theodora “Teddy” Bentley finds herself officially in charge of a brand-new red panda at the Gunn Zoo and not-so-officially in charge of a murder investigation when a body turns up floating next to her beloved boat The Merilee in California’s Monterey Bay.

While Teddy’s thinking up ways to convince her handsome sheriff hubby Joe that she has to break her promise to never snoop again, one of the suspects turns out to be Joe’s newly discovered teenage son Dylan, the product of a senior prom one-night stand. (Thanks to mother-in-law/mystery writer Colleen Rejas and DNA testing!)

The latest in Betty Webb’s Gunn Zoo mystery series has a lot going for it: first there’s Teddy, one of the most zany and lovable cozy protagonists out there. Plus, as in all the previous novels, there are fascinating zoological facts about the zoo residents, especially Teddy’s new charge, Poonya the red panda, and what animal handlers do. Then there’s the well-done mystery element. Not only does Webb keep readers guessing whodunit up to the end, she keeps them howling with all the comical plot goings-on along the way (In one scene Teddy winds up naked in the wolf enclosure trying to save a toddler). As in all series, reading in order is best, but the case does stand OK alone.

Line of Sight opens with a teenage boy on the run from unseen assailants. Out of breath, he makes his way across the West Ward neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, sprinting alongside row houses and chain-link fences, finally taking cover in the historic Woodland Cemetery—a prophetic locale, considering what’s about to happen to Kevin Mathis.

Mathis’ fate becomes intertwined with that of Russell Avery, a former crime reporter turned private investigator, when community activist Keyonna “Key” Jackson implores Avery to look into the boy’s death. She believes Mathis, a known drug dealer, might have run afoul of some cops-gone-bad. But until now, Avery’s PI work has been about exonerating accused police officers, not incriminating them.

Line of Sight, told in Avery’s voice, works hard to inspire empathy for its protagonist as a man on a tightrope as he quizzes men and women in blue, as well as gangbangers in hoodies. But telling us that Mathis’ tragedy should be given the same attention as a white, suburban kid who overdoses on an opioid isn’t the same as making us feel and believe it. Gritty language and characters with monikers like Hoodie Guy and Forearm Guy or exposition on social justice movements aren’t enough. Readers have to really care.

And this is where this debut novel falls short. It could have used a less layered plot (we spotted the “bad guy”) and stronger character building. The female characters especially disappoint. As for Avery, we hear his conflicting thoughts as he maneuvers Jersey’s mean streets in his Chevy Impala, but we don’t root for him the way we want to root for our protagonist.

No question, author James Queally knows the crime beat—and his Jersey locale. A crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, the author previously worked for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger. Line of Sight takes readers past Family Dollar stores, into the punk rock hangout Court Tavern, and the booths at Hobby’s Deli. If the story doesn’t quite snag you, at least you can fantasize about Hobby’s amazing pastrami on rye.

It’s 1947, and 28-year-old legal secretary Alice Miller is anxious to escape London, so when she is offered a governess position at remote Winterbourne Hall, she eagerly accepts. Upon arriving at her new home on the Cornwall coast, Alice is filled with optimism. Her charges—eight-year-old twins Constance and Edmund de Grey—are sweet and kind and take to her immediately, and although their father, widower and injured war veteran Captain Jonathan de Grey, is stern and emotionally distant, Alice feels certain she can win him over. It’s not long, though, before despair creeps in; the children turn duplicitous and mean, Jonathan expresses outright hostility, and Alice starts waking up covered in unexplained bruises and catching glimpses of a woman clad entirely in black.

Seventy-odd years later, New York City gallery owner Rachel Wright receives a letter from a law firm in England: Constance de Grey is dead and Winterbourne Hall now belongs to Rachel, as Constance’s niece and next of kin. The news shocks Rachel, who was adopted in infancy and has never been able to identify her birth parents. Hoping for answers, Rachel heads to Cornwall and begins sifting through the decrepit mansion’s contents. She quickly discovers, however, that Winterbourne harbors far more than she bargained for.

Rebecca James (Sweet Damage, 2013) delivers a chilling psychological mystery rife with ghosts both literal and figurative. Evocative, atmospheric prose complements the story’s patient pacing, the elements working in tandem to heighten tension and inspire dread. Alice’s first-person, present-tense narration is interspersed with third-person, past-tense chapters that follow Rachel, underscoring the women’s respective roles as victim and detective.

Regrettably, while Alice is a vividly sketched, realistically damaged heroine who comes to life on the page, Rachel doesn’t ring quite as true; for an American, she sounds disconcertingly British, and nearly all of her interactions feel manufactured for the sake of the story rather than grounded in character. Still, tight plotting and a clever structure will keep readers turning pages, desperate for James to fill in the final pieces of her gloriously gothic puzzle.

False Value is the eighth book in Ben Aaronovitch’s acclaimed Rivers of London series, something that is readily apparent from the first few chapters, as the narrative switches back and forth in time between January and December, never slowing down to explain things it is assumed the reader already knows from past installments. Eventually the novel circles back to do so, clearing up such pertinent information as the fact that the main character’s girlfriend, Beverly, is a literal river goddess, and providing descriptions of the various magical organizations to which our protagonist belongs.

The snappy, funny dialogue and inner thoughts of the first-person narrator, Peter Grant, as well as the clever way the back-and-forth time jumps are used, will make a new reader want to stick with it, however.

Grant is a funny man, constantly throwing out jokes and references as he deals with the insane magical mess that is his life. At least as of this novel, he is a former magical police officer known as a “practitioner,” meaning he can use magic by forming his thoughts in just the right order. It’s not clear if everyone is capable of magic if properly taught or if one must be born able, but either way, Peter is an adequate practitioner, though he’s still learning the craft.

Living with his pregnant girlfriend Beverly, who is due to have twins sooner rather than later, he’s starting a new job rooting out corporate espionage at a tech company. Magical crimes are his business and it’s clear almost immediately that this new job is mixed up with his old one and that the rot in the firm comes straight from the top. The more he digs, the more people he might hurt in the end. As a good person, and as a cop at heart no matter what, this is bound to prey on him eventually.

A snappy read with a number of twists and turns, False Value will keep the reader entertained. Though some moments in it might mean more, or be more clear, if one had read the other novels, it’s still a decent thriller in its own right. Aaronovitch has created a richly imagined magical world, with vivid details that feel real. Fans of mystery, fantasy, and particularly fans of this series are sure to be pleased.

The seventh Silver Rush mystery takes series character Inez Stannert out of the mining towns and gambling dens where the series originated to the heart of 1881 San Francisco. Pianist Inez has opened a music store that also specializes in “Oriental curiosities,” curated by her shy but knowledgeable employee Mr. Hee.

As the story opens, it is the holiday season and Inez and her ward, Antonia, are at the opera house watching a concert given by Theia Drake, the so-called “Golden Songbird” of the West. Antonia is looking forward to the promised backstage tour after the performance, and as she and Inez are shown around by the manager of the opera house, Inez sees a piano center stage and asks if she can try it out. The manager readily agrees, and Inez sits down to play “Ave Maria.” She plays it so movingly that Mrs. Drake, who is also backstage, hears it and offers to hire her on the spot as her accompanist.

She also summarily fires her present accompanist, Mr. Rubio, in front of all assembled. The combination of over-the-top emotive behavior and a golden voice makes Theia a genuine diva, and it’s she that controls the narrative of this novel.

As her struggling business can use the cash infusion, Inez agrees to the engagement, especially as it will be short term since Theia has promised her husband she will retire in the New Year.

When Inez arrives to her first day, she discovers that Theia’s beloved bird, who accompanied her everywhere, has been killed, and the gorgeous dress she performed in at the opera house has been slashed to bits. This event sets off an inquiry which draws in a detective who had known Theia in the past and who ends up working with Inez on an undercover basis, as she’s so well placed to observe the goings-on in the opera house’s universe.

The author has created a wonderful picture of 1880s San Francisco, partially Wild West, partially a western cultural outpost, and a melting pot for the Chinese immigrants streaming in. She’s also created a good look at what it might have been like to have been a musician at the time, from the world of diva Theia Drake to music store owner and pianist Inez to the musicians perpetually looking for their next gig to make ends meet.

The actual murder, other than that of the bird, doesn’t occur until halfway through the book, and my criticism of the novel is with its somewhat meandering narrative. While I appreciated being immersed in Inez’s musical world, I also like a good story, and the story here is somewhat thin. The path taken by the writer to get to the heartbreaking and surprisingly ambiguous end of her novel sometimes made me impatient. That said, I did enjoy visiting the music scene of 1880s San Francisco.