By Kerryn Mayne
St. Martin's Press, 2024. 339 pages. Fiction
This delightfully dark novel is a character-driven mystery and psychological drama about Lenny Marks, a socially awkward, neurodivergent, trauma-affected woman living a carefully controlled life. She works as a teacher’s aide and spends her free time immersed in true crime shows and journaling letters to her long-absent mother. Her rigid routine unravels when a letter from the parole board informs her that someone from her past—specifically related to a traumatic event she’s repressed—is being released from prison. This triggers a cascade of memories, revelations, and emotional confrontations that force Lenny to re-examine her own history, the people around her, and what actually happened in her childhood.
The book combines dark humor, psychological suspense, and emotional depth and it explores trauma, recovery, and self-determination. While it plays with the expectations of the murder mystery genre, its focus is ultimately more on personal growth than crime-solving. Lenny Marks is a character I won't soon forget! I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator's Australian lilt is genuinely charming.
If you like Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder you might also like:
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Blackmail and Bibingka
By Mia Manansala
Berkley Prime Crime, 2022. 270 pages. Mystery
Cozy meets culinary in this seasonal amateur sleuthing tale starring Lila Macapagal, who is balancing her new café and budding romance. She is forced to investigate when her estranged cousin Ronnie—back after 15 years—becomes the prime suspect in a local winery-linked murder. This book is rich with Filipino food, family dynamics, and holiday flair, and the story keeps a light tone even as it delves into greed, secrets, and the deep bonds that hold a community together.
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The Woman in the Library
By Sulari Gentill
Poisoned Pen Press, 2022. 288 pages. Mystery
The tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning--it just happens that one is a murderer.
Vera Wong's tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown may have lost most of its customers and her Gen-Z son rarely returns her texts, but she manages to thrive on her own. After finding a dead body in her tea shop and stealing a piece of evidence from the crime scene, Vera uses her detective skills to try to solve the murder. Using tea and home-cooked meals, Vera draws close her four suspects. Each of them has a secret that connects them to the victim and might tear their newfound family apart. The author excels at creating lovably flawed characters, the mystery has plenty of twists to keep readers guessing, and Vera's case notes at the end of some chapters add humor to the deductive process.
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After Annie
By Anna Quindlen
Random House, 2024. 304 pages. Fiction
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By Mia Manansala
Berkley Prime Crime, 2022. 270 pages. Mystery
Cozy meets culinary in this seasonal amateur sleuthing tale starring Lila Macapagal, who is balancing her new café and budding romance. She is forced to investigate when her estranged cousin Ronnie—back after 15 years—becomes the prime suspect in a local winery-linked murder. This book is rich with Filipino food, family dynamics, and holiday flair, and the story keeps a light tone even as it delves into greed, secrets, and the deep bonds that hold a community together.
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By Sulari Gentill
Poisoned Pen Press, 2022. 288 pages. Mystery
The tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning--it just happens that one is a murderer.
.jpg)
Vera Wong's tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown may have lost most of its customers and her Gen-Z son rarely returns her texts, but she manages to thrive on her own. After finding a dead body in her tea shop and stealing a piece of evidence from the crime scene, Vera uses her detective skills to try to solve the murder. Using tea and home-cooked meals, Vera draws close her four suspects. Each of them has a secret that connects them to the victim and might tear their newfound family apart. The author excels at creating lovably flawed characters, the mystery has plenty of twists to keep readers guessing, and Vera's case notes at the end of some chapters add humor to the deductive process.
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By Anna Quindlen
Random House, 2024. 304 pages. Fiction
When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie's children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life. Over the course of the next year what saves them all is Annie, ever-present in their minds, loving but not sentimental, caring but nobody's fool, a voice in their heads that is funny and sharp and remarkably clear. The power she has given to those who loved her is the power to go on without her. The lesson they learn is that no one beloved is ever truly gone.
LKA
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