6 Cleverly Plotted Mysteries That Build in Intensity

Published posthumously in 1952, THE SINGING SANDS is Josephine Tey’s final mystery featuring her beloved character Alan Grant. In it, the Scotland Yard inspector is dealing with burnout after a recent spell of overworking in which he’s suffered more than one debilitating anxiety attack. As a means of coping, Grant has taken a sick leave, deciding to take the night train to the Scottish Highlands to rest at the peaceful home of his cousin Laura. But it isn’t long before trouble finds the inspector with the discovery of a dead body aboard the train. In the newspaper that the recently deceased was reading, Grant finds an elusive poem, handwritten, about a paradise guarded by “singing sand.” And what begins as a casual inquiry—as he hopes to adhere to his doctor’s orders—soon turns into a full-blown investigation to not only unlock the key to the poem but uncover the truth about a grisly murder. Like a midnight train accelerating to its final destination, THE SINGING SANDS is the quintessential mystery that pumps the adrenaline as a legendary character gets closer to answers.

Welcome to Paz Pardo’s alternate reality where emotions have been weaponized thanks to hallucinogenic dye developed by Argentine military scientists. As a result of these “psychopigments,” the world’s cities, which were all but wiped out in a global conflict, now exist in a cycle of endless battles between the black market dealers peddling these new recreational drugs and a police force trying to contain the dealings. Kay Curtida is an agent with the Psychopigment Enforcement, working in Daly City, just outside the ruins of San Francisco. A user herself (taking Sunshine Yellow to treat her depression), Curtida is focused on small-time crooks. That is, until an old academy friend shows up with the case of a lifetime—a chance to go after the black market cartel. But the case quickly lands her in the middle of a conspiracy featuring a radical scientist, fighters from the “People’s Pigment Movement,” and an evil biopharma corporation. THE SHAMSHINE BLIND is a dazzling detective story that combines noir motifs and science fiction for a compelling mystery that delivers on all fronts.

Called “a master of plot manipulation” by the New York Times Book Review, Dorothy Simpson’s A DAY FOR DYING does not disappoint, with an expertly crafted mystery that features Inspector Luke Thanet among an upper-middle-class cast of characters. The setting is an engagement party for Max Jeopard and Tess Sylvester. The party is already off to a rocky start when, suddenly, notorious playboy Max is found dead in the swimming pool of hosts Ralph and Marion Sylvester. What follows is a carefully paced mystery in which Thanet must unravel a stormy relationship between Max and Tess, a possible dalliance that Max may have had with the housekeeper, and the brief disappearance of the Sylvesters’ schizophrenic son, Carey, during the party. It seems that the key to understanding the full picture is Max’s charisma, which, during his work as a flashy travel writer, has been on full display in recent months. Industrious readers will be able to spot hints left by Simpson possibly before Thanet, but either way, A DAY FOR DYING is another captivating case that only becomes more dramatic as the novel reaches its explosive conclusion.

Jinwoo Chong’s imaginative debut explores three different plotlines from three different characters that have lost something precious in their lives. There’s Bo, an eight-year-old who loses his mother in a traffic accident. There’s the twenty-eight-year-old Brandon, who, following the loss of his employment, manages to fall down an elevator shaft and emerge with a new job offer. And lastly, there’s Blue, a forty-eight-year-old key witness in a criminal trial, who recovers his ability to speak after being mute for most of his life. Among the timelines of characters dealing with grief, the novel includes essays from the fictional 1980s show Raider. The interconnecting theme of these three characters is that of time travel, which the author slowly unravels via connections between the television show and these protagonists. Chong writes with such deftness that readers may not realize the mystery at hand until nearly halfway through the novel. Even when they do, FLUX only picks up the pace from there—much to the delight of its readers.

DOCTOR DEATH follows Madeleine Karno, an ambitious young woman seeking to enter the scientific field despite the conventions of 1890s France, as she slowly unravels a murder mystery. Madeleine’s father, known as “Doctor Death,” is Varbourg’s primary pathologist and a champion of antiseptics to stop the spread of disease by bacteria. He provides Madeleine a privileged view of the world, but she’s still allowed nowhere near the autopsy table. So when a young girl, Cecile, is found dead in the snowy streets and the family refuses to let Madeleine’s father perform a postmortem, the father and daughter are left with but one single clue. And when the priest who held the vigil becomes sick and is soon murdered, Madeleine must spring into action and seek out answers. Little does she know her sleuthing will lead her down a dark, twisted path. DOCTOR DEATH is a poignant coming-of-age story and a mystery that starts on page one and only ratchets up the suspense from there.

Sophie Medina is a freelance photojournalist, relatively new to Washington, DC. Taking whatever work she can get, she soon finds herself at a high-society party in town where she befriends a Franciscan friar. Brother Kevin is well-known in town for his work on several “green projects” and hopes to publish a book about gardening and agriculture in the near future. It’s therefore no surprise when he asks Sophie to meet him at the Tidal Basin the next day, presumably to help lay the groundwork for such an endeavor. What is surprising is the key Brother Kevin “mistakenly” drops in the presence of Sophie during that meeting, after telling her he’s being watched. Even worse, shortly after doing so, the friar is found dead on the foot of his monastery. Sophie soon finds that the key Brother Kevin left her is to a locker where he has placed a seventeenth-century encyclopedia of plants, potentially worth millions for the answers it may unlock about an international treasure. What follows is a quick-moving mystery that takes Sophie from the US Capitol to London and, ultimately, the English countryside as she seeks a fortune…while also trying to outrun Brother Kevin’s killer. It’s a race against time and a good old-fashioned mystery that is paced to perfection and builds in intensity until the final chapters.