Cathy Pickens' 3 favorite reads in

2023

• 2023
• 2023

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Skelton’s Guide is the first of three mysteries featuring English barrister Arthur Skelton, who has just successfully defended the accused in 1929’s case of the century and is finding himself having to contend with autograph hounds, journalists, and clients clambering for his help. He, though, is remarkably self-effacing about his skills and charmingly in awe of his wife. 

I loved that Skelton is based (very loosely) on real-life tall, nerdy barrister Norman Birkett, who famously defended a “domestic poisoning,”, along with a suitcase murder and a burning car case (the next books in the series). Can he get Mary Dutton off when everyone is convinced—and the evidence is overwhelming—that she poisoned her husband? A charming period mystery with characters I hope to see again. What a delight!

I write, read, watch, and listen to true crime. A few writers sit at the top of my must-read list, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Edward Humes is one. He explores the long-solved 1987 murder of two young people from Vancouver who disappeared in Washington State and, most grippingly, the story of genetic genealogy (tracing family trees and DNA connections to identify a murder suspect).

This case was the first where the defendant was successfully convicted in a trial, relying on the work of genealogist CeCe Moore and Parabon Nanolabs (featured recently in a limited ABC TV series The Genetic Detective). Coincidentally, Barbara Rae-Venter’s book, I Know Who You Are, was published about the same time—another good read about how she used genetic genealogy to crack the Golden State Killer case.

I love good mysteries and I love good storytelling. Ann Cleeves always delivers both. This is one of her Vera detective series, which also appears on BritBox with Brenda Blethyn as the opinionated and dogged detective-of-a-certain-age. Cleeves also writes the Shetland series, among others.

Vera’s an older woman who faces life and the worst that people can do to others with an unflinching honesty and a wicked sense of humor. This is the series I go to when I want an atmospheric read with interesting characters and a real puzzle of a mystery. Snow is falling and Christmas is coming when a woman resident of Harbour Street doesn’t exit the train at her station. She’s been stabbed, and DCI Vera Stanhope has to uncover her hidden past to understand why.

Myrtle Hardcastle is a most unconventional twelve-year-old, especially for the 1920s—she loves forensic science. Raised by her father and her governess, she has access to his law books and court cases, her scientist-mother’s microscope and curiosity, and the sometimes reluctant encouragement and stalwart protection of Miss Ada Judson.

In this first in the series—which won the Edgar Award from Mystery Writers of America—Myrtle knows the death of her wealthy flower-breeding Miss Wodehouse was not natural, even if the prosecutor (her father) doesn’t want to believe it. Myrtle’s tenacity and talent had me wanting to get out my magnifying glass and go looking for clues—just as Nancy Drew did for me when I was younger.

Maureen Johnson has written a list of YA novels and won loads of awards and “notables.” Truly Devious is the first in a trilogy about a group of students chosen to attend a high school for those with special talents or interests. Stevie Bell can’t believe they chose her to attend—her application said she was obsessed with the unsolved 1930s disappearance of the wife and daughter of the wealthy founder of the school. She wanted to come and solve the mystery.

The story takes three books to unravel, so get ready to read. I found myself invested in the characters and their quirky interests and fascinated by this school high atop a wintery Vermont mountain, with secret passageways, sudden deaths, and more than one mystery to solve. But I especially liked that Stevie was consumed by an interest in true crime. She proves herself an able detective.