Gift ideas for mystery readers

“The Marlow Murder Club” by Robert Thorogood is the first in what is bound to be a long-running series of almost-cozy mysteries featuring 77-year-old Judith Potts, a no-nonsense British woman who creates crossword puzzles, drinks whiskey and becomes an amateur detective when her neighbor across the river is shot dead.

Two more people are killed while Judith, along with her sidekicks Suzie, a dog walker, and Becks, the local vicar’s wife, get themselves into a number of scrapes before solving the cases.

Choose this if you like your mysteries on the lighter side, more like the Thursday Murder Club series, the Agatha Raisin mysteries or the Royal Spyness series.

Speaking of the Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman’s third entry in the series is just as delightful as the first two. “The Bullet That Missed” finds the intrepid quartet of British retirees digging into yet another cold case that turns red hot.

Most mystery readers I know like to read series in order, so to get up to speed with Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim, start with “The Thursday Murder Club” then “The Man Who Died Twice.” Each book includes humor with a good dose of tenderness plus a captivating plot with a likable cast of characters.

“The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections” is a lovely standalone mystery by Canadian Eva Jurczyk set in the world of an academic library.

Just as she is nearing retirement, Liesl Weiss becomes interim library director when her boss is hospitalized with a stroke, and the job quickly turns difficult when a priceless manuscript goes missing.

When a fellow librarian disappears soon after, thereby becoming the prime suspect, Liesl finds herself at odds with the university president, prominent donors and her coworkers to clear her friend’s name and find the true culprit.

Along the way, the reader learns about Liesl’s sometimes difficult marriage, her connections with colleagues and her career as a rare books librarian.

“Killers of a Certain Age” by Deanna Raybourn presents a more dangerous retirement scenario. Four assassins are about to call it quits when they realize someone wants to silence them for good, and they jump into action to save themselves and find their nemesis.

The plot moved along quickly, but the characters kept me turning the pages. Raybourn creates fully realized women in Billie, Mary Alice, Helen and Natalie, and I loved their chemistry.

Finally, “Murder in Westminster” is the first book in the Lady Worthing Regency era mystery series by Vanessa Riley.

Lady Abigail Worthing finds her neighbor’s body in her yard, and she immediately is a suspect because she is Black, her family has a Past and she has an alibi she can’t reveal: She secretly left a play to attend a pro-abolition meeting.

Surprisingly, she finds herself working the case with the murdered woman’s husband, Stapleton Henderson, and Riley introduces a romantic tension that intrigued me. Abigail’s marriage to Lord Worthing is one of convenience and respect, but he is at sea, and Stapleton’s marriage was over long before his wife was killed.

Abigail is a strong, clever protagonist in the vein of Charlotte Holmes of the Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas. I also appreciated the focus on London’s people of color during that era.

For more gift-giving suggestions, contact me at kwiley@cityofroseburg.org or 541-492-7051.