Mysteries That Can Cut Through the Sugary Sweetness of the Holidays

If you’re a fan of mysteries and CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter then you’re likely familiar with the show’s Mystery Book Panel. Twice a year the panel gets together to suggest their favourite mysteries. The panel consists of P.K. Rangachari, a mystery novel enthusiast and professor emeritus of medicine at McMaster University, J.D. Singh, the owner of the Sleuths of Baker Street Bookstore in Toronto, and Margaret Cannon, the Globe and Mail's mystery books columnist. If you’re wondering why you should read murderous fiction at this time of year then Margaret Cannon has the answer: "All that treacle and all that sweetness just needs to have some real nastiness to cut it."

Here is the book panel’s most recent suggestions. Hope you find a good one to enjoy over the holidays!

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter is Margaret Cannon’s top pick for holiday reading:

“This book is being compared to Gone Girl, but it's much better than Gone Girl. The central plot is a young woman who goes out for drinks with friends. She's a college student, a very pretty girl and she's on her way home after a couple of drinks and she disappears. For 21 years no one knows where she's gone. The police say she ran away. Her family knows she didn't run away, and there's always the idea that maybe she's out there. Her father writes a diary to her, telling her about what's going on in life and he can't get past the loss of his pretty girl. His wife does move on and at the end the prologue, she tells him that he's got to get moving on because if he knew what happened, the details would tear him apart. It's the details that eventually come out in this book and they do indeed tear you apart. It's really well written both in terms of character and plot. It will definitely take you away from the Christmas elves”. – Margaret Cannon

Death in the Rainy Season by Anna Jaquiery is P.K. Rangachari's top pick for holiday reading:

“This book is set in Cambodia. Basically what happens is there's a French detective who's half Khmer who's on holiday, and he's asked to investigate the murder of a do-gooder, one of these people who works at an NGO trying to rescue children and so on. The victim has been bashed to death and he's selected a hotel room under an assumed name so all kinds of issues come up: is this a personal vendetta? Is it political? The story is very beautiful, except for the incessant rain. I grew up in India and the monsoons were deadly. Somebody once said that the last chapter of David Copperfield should have been written on blotting paper. I think this entire book should have been written on blotting paper. It's soaking. But the story is very interesting, partly because it merges the past and the present and because I grew up during the time of the Indochina war in India, all these names are very familiar to me. Of course the other issue that comes up is, what do NGOs do? I have always been extraordinarily skeptical of them. Are they there to help people or are they there to hinder people? The story is very beautifully written, the characters are most interesting. There isn't much of a mystery; you can sort of figure it out. It's really more about the characters”. – P.K. Rangachari

Dark Reservations by John Fortunato is J.D. Singh’s top pick for holiday reading:

“It's a debut novel and this year's winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize. The novel is set primarily in Navajo country and basically our principal character is a BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) agent by the name of Joe Evers. This particularly interesting case comes up and he decides he wants to investigate it. The case is an American congressman who is being investigated for corruption, but 20 years ago, and has been missing all this time. Now this car turns up on the reservation along with mysterious bullet holes and so on and so forth. Delightful story, well written and I'm quite looking forward to the sequels to this”. – J.D. Singh

Here is the rest of their list of choices in no particular order:
Louise