A Summer Reading List of Lighthearted Mysteries

For a lot of readers, summer season is the time for breezy, undemanding books—the sort you may toss in a seashore bag and end earlier than the sunburn units in. Sue Halpern, a former New Yorker workers author whose newest novel, “What We Go away Behind,” got here out this week, has a listing of suggestions that match the invoice: cozy mysteries. The subgenre is usually dismissed by diehard crime followers as too tame or genteel to be included with different true thrillers. However, Halpern contends, “the world is a darkish and malevolent place nowadays, and there’s something reassuring about coming into a universe filled with humor and endearing characters, the place good all the time wins with out a lot spilled blood.”The Thursday Homicide Clubby Richard OsmanBy now, Osman’s “Thursday Homicide Membership” books—the fifth of which is due in September—are the flagship of cozy mysteries. The sequence is constructed upon a pleasant conceit: in an upscale English retirement village, 4 residents meet as soon as every week to unravel chilly circumstances.On this, the primary installment, there are two deaths—first, of an area contractor with ties to the underworld, then of the retirement village’s rapacious developer. After that, the retirees—previously a psychiatrist, a nurse, a labor organizer, and, we suspect, an M.I.6 agent—get cracking. What makes the sequence so pleasant is Osman’s depraved humorousness, and the empathy suffused all through. Osman’s investigators are individuals of their later years who’re properly acquainted with loss of life and what precedes it. And for them, fixing murders, consorting with mobsters, and adopting aliases all turn into extra life-affirming—to not point out entertaining—than chair yoga and a salt-free eating regimen.Dying and Croissantsby Ian MooreAt the outset of this e-book, Richard Ainsworth, a middle-aged English movie historian separated from his spouse, has decamped, not fully fortunately, to the Loire Valley to run a B. and B. There, he raises hens named Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, and Joan Crawford, is bullied by his dour housekeeper, glumly serves his visitors breakfast, and rewatches previous motion pictures. However his life takes a flip for the absurd with the arrival of a wonderful Frenchwoman, Valérie, with an imperious chihuahua, simply as one other visitor goes lacking.Pulled alongside by Valérie like a recalcitrant pet, Richard units off on a quest to seek out the lacking man, who could have ties to the Sicilian Mafia. Alongside the way in which, the 2 encounter a forged of characters that features a butcher in a Stetson, a person dressed as a rooster, and Richard’s nudist neighbors. All of it goes comically unsuitable till, in the end, it goes comically proper, with Valerie and the hapless Richard turning out to be their very own model of Hepburn and Tracy. Thankfully for Richard, Valérie decides to spend extra time within the Loire Valley, and, happily for us, the duo returns in 4 extra novels. The audiobooks, learn by the creator, who voices the forged with panache and has a dexterous, even (when acceptable) horny, French accent, are the way in which to go.The Charles Lenox Mysteriesby Charles FinchIt appears unattainable that Finch hadn’t but set foot in England when he created the pleasant Victorian detective Charles Lenox, an Oxford-educated aristocrat who begins the sequence as an novice sleuth and, over time, makes it his occupation. Lenox lives in Mayfair, subsequent door to his dearest pal, a widow in her early thirties. He’s attended and aided by his trustworthy manservant, Graham, and typically assisted by one other confidant, Dr. Thomas McConnell. Sure, there are echoes of Holmes and Watson right here, however Lenox is his personal man: a humanist, even a form of feminist, with a deep curiosity and compassion for others that belies his class.To date, there are greater than a dozen books on this sequence, which stretches from 1850 to 1878. Over time, Lenox evolves—however so do these round him. Graham, it seems, is a harbinger of an England the place class turns into much less of an important determinant of 1’s trajectory, and his path is simply as satisfying as Lenox’s.The Phrase Is Murderby Anthony HorowitzIn the “Hawthorne and Horowitz” sequence, Horowitz—the creator of too many books to rely and the creator of a number of TV exhibits—casts himself as a fictional character. His alter ego collaborates with a gruff, laconic ex-police investigator named Daniel Hawthorne, whom he meets when Hawthorne is employed to seek the advice of on Horowitz’s tv initiatives. Quickly, Hawthorne asks Horowitz to tag together with him as he solves circumstances, for the aim of Horowitz writing a e-book known as “Hawthorne Investigates”—a horrible thought, Horowitz thinks, earlier than going forward and doing it anyway.“The Phrase Is Homicide” is the primary within the sequence, and it begins when a widow walks right into a funeral parlor someday to rearrange her future funeral service and is strangled that very night. Horowitz is a grasp of self-deprecating humor, and at depicting the curiosities of his central odd couple. Whereas the detective is busy cracking the case, Horowitz is without end making an attempt to crack the enigma of Hawthorne. Considered one of them succeeds brilliantly. The opposite, not a lot.