Hell’s Bells
by Jill Johnson (Black & White, $37.99)
Brighton-based Māori storyteller Jill Johnson introduced a truly unique amateur sleuth in Devil’s Breath: Eustacia Rose, a neurodivergent expert in deadly botanicals with a rooftop garden full of poisonous plants and a voyeuristic interest in her female neighbour. While that first outing was a BBC TV pick and recent thriller awards finalist, it did feel like Eustacia’s story deserved to bloom for more than one season.
In Hell’s Bells, Eustacia is back teaching at University College London, but a possible poisoning and a stalker-ish PhD student with eyes on her poisonous plant collection upturn the life she tries to keep well in order. When the student also turns up dead, Eustacia feels forced to investigate. Johnson, who used to run a leading UK comics store (and later studied for a degree in horticulture), has crafted a wonderfully unusual heroine: blunt, eccentric, unintentionally hilarious at times. Fearful yet brave, Eustacia, with her friends, who are often botanically categorised, deliver a fresh feel to intriguing storylines in a growing series that’s likely to delight cosy mystery fans.
Fatal Gambit
by David Lagercrantz, translated by Ian Giles (MacLehose Press, $37.99)
Swedish writer Lagercrantz also has a brilliant touch for enigmatic characters, fictional and real-life. Best known globally for continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series starring goth hacker antihero Lisbeth Salander, Lagercrantz has also written books on persecuted maths genius Alan Turing and mercurial footballer Zlatan Ibrahimović. Now, in Fatal Gambit, he continues his own Holmes and Watson-style mystery series, as the husband of a supposedly long-dead financier brings tough Stockholm cop Micaela Vargas a holiday snap he swears shows her still living. Vargas loops in troubled forensics genius Hans Rekke, but as the pair investigate, problems compound. Rekke is falling apart, Vargas is battling her gangster brother, and the duo uncover a conspiracy involving high-ranking Swedish officials, international bankers and organised crime in eastern Europe. To hardly mention an old enemy from Rekke’s past re-emerging. Lagercrantz masterfully weaves all the threads together, gives a few nods to Conan Doyle, and builds to a thrilling finale. Two books in, it’s already a terrific series.
Death at the Sanatorium
by Ragnar Jónasson, translated by Victoria Cribb (Michael Joseph, $38)
The author of two popular series starring smalltown sleuth Ari Thor and DI Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavik police, Jónasson most recently teamed with then-Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir to write bestselling 2022 mystery Reykjavik, but now returns to his roots (he translated several Agatha Christie novels into Icelandic when he was a teenager) with a classically styled murder-mystery.
In 2012, 30-something Helgi Reykdal is torn. A criminology postgrad at a UK university, Helgi has returned to Iceland, where he interned with the Reykjavik police for a summer. A job is waiting for him if he wants it, and his live-in girlfriend, Bergthóra, wants the fractious pair to stay there. For his dissertation, he gets sucked into the unsolved 1983 murder of a nurse at an isolated former tuberculosis sanatorium. When another nurse is killed in 2012, Helgi embarks on a twisting investigation into the two crimes.
Jónasson beautifully builds suspense as he oscillates across two time periods. This is a clever mystery from a masterful storyteller.
