S02E09: My favourite mystery reads of 2025

A short but solid list.

2025 was a great year in terms of discovering obscure and new (to me) mystery writers, thanks partly to my June trip to the Lake District when I raided every secondhand bookshop in every village we stayed in, and partly to the husband bringing me a whole suitcase of books when he travelled there again a few months later.

I wasn’t exaggerating.

As I sat down to write this reading retrospective, I also discovered, to my dismay, that 2025 is the first year ever that I didn’t re-read an Agatha Christie. Not a short story collection, not a Westmacott, not even her autobiography, which is my comfort-read. ˙◠˙

I intend to rectify this in 2026 because Agatha is the Queen, the writer against whose clever plots, spartan writing, and memorable characters I measure every other mystery I read. Very few match up, but I am glad to report that this year, some actually did! Here is my list.

Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert (1950)

Life at the highly respectable law firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine is shaken when a deed box in the office is opened, only to reveal the decaying corpse of a client. Who among the many secretaries, lawyers, and partners could have dunnit? Inspector Hazelrigg and his team of smart policemen follow every trail doggedly until the murderer is unmasked.

There is so much to love about this book. A great setting, many colourful characters, excellent humour, and clever clueing that plays fair with the reader. I love that none of the policemen is a bumbling idiot. They match the reader step-to-step in trying to solve the mystery.

Michael Gilbert (whose work made it to my favourite reads of 2024 as well) has captured the atmosphere and office dynamics of a 1950s London office superbly well. Women are no longer an unusual sight in the workplace, but work as secretaries or typists—some are unacknowledged linchpins of the office and others are vapid and ornamental. Sexual harassment is omnipresent and dismissed with casual scorn by everyone involved. And yet, it’s not a bad place to work.

Inspector Hazelrigg is a bit colourless but strangely, I didn’t mind. The other characters more than made up for it. This was a real page-turner with enough clues laid out for readers who like to try and figure out who/why/how and devious enough to still mislead them.

Slight Mourning by Catherine Aird (1975)

After William Fent—local squire, landowner, justice of the peace—hosts a dinner party at his house, he offers to drive an elderly guest home. On the way back, he is killed in a car crash. A sad accident… or was it? Because the autopsy reveals poison in his system.

I’ve enjoyed Catherine Aird’s short stories in various anthologies but this was my first full-length novel of hers. It’s a short, brisk police procedural that follows classic Golden Age of Detection traditions in setting and tone, even though it is set in the relatively modern mid-70s.

We discover clues and form theories along with DI Sloan (a well-rounded character who has his own arc across multiple books) and chase after the same red herrings that he does. For nearly 80% of the book, he plods along, puzzling one thing after another, and seemingly no closer to a solution. I admit I was bewildered myself, until Aird turned things around in the last 20% for a neat, satisfactory mystery.

The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunits edited by Mike Ashley (1993)

I love thematic short story collections and am always on the lookout for both the Mammoth Book series and the British Library Crime Classics. This one was an unexpected find from Blossoms and I am absolutely delighted with it.

It is a carefully curated selection of historical mysteries, organized by period: starting from the ancient world, through the Middle Ages, all the way to the 18th century. Mike Ashley has added helpful little intros for each author and sleuth.

The biggest attractions are the varied settings, descriptions of life during these periods, and reimagining of real people. For instance, one story has Socrates solving a crime using his deductive reasoning process. Anthologies are often a mixed bag but this one has only ~10% duds, which is really something.

Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin (1950)

Oxford English don Gervase Fen is called in as a consultant for a film about the life of poet Alexander Pope. But he gets pulled into an investigation with good friend Inspector Humbleby when a young actress from the film kills herself. Who drove her to such a step? Who is trying to cover up her identity and why?

What I enjoyed the most about this book was the setting. It gave me an interesting picture of life on the sets, or rather premises, of a British film production company in the 1950s. And barring an unnecessary maze-chase at the end, this has a pretty good puzzle. When the murderer was revealed, I initially felt cheated because it seemed to come out of left field. But a few minutes of thinking showed me that Crispin had laid out clues that I had missed, which means grudging respect. Bonus: the exchanges between Prof. Fen (pedantic, literary) and Inspector Humbleby (prosaic, unimaginative) are hilarious.

A Helping Hand by Celia Dale (1966)

Josh and Maisie Evans are Good Samaritans and enjoy lending a helping hand to lonely elderly ladies. For instance, ‘Auntie’ Flo lived with them for years until she died and left them whatever she had. On a holiday in Italy, when they meet lonely old Mrs.Fingal, they invite her to come live with them in Auntie Flo’s old room. Is it the kindness of their heart, or is there something darker lurking underneath?

This is a dark and delicious book with keen insights into the tragedy of ageing. Celia Dale creates an atmosphere of unease that grows into dread as you turn the pages. She says a lot without saying much and her technique of leaving some parts to the reader’s imagination is very effective (given our tendency to imagine the worst). I read this in a feverish haze and was left with a feeling of heaviness. Not a detective novel but certainly involves crime, psychology, and mystery—‘suburban horror’ as a reviewer put it.

The Dalehouse Murder by Francis Everton (1927)

A set of Bright Young Things arrive at a doctor's country house for a tennis tournament. A day or so later, one among them—a particularly beautiful girl—is found dead in her bed. Murdered, it is established, using a rare (and unnamed) Chinese poison that the doctor supposedly locked away in his dispensary.

This fairly obscure book (which is in the public domain now) had been on my Kindle for ages but I read it only this year when looking for an easy read. For a change, I looked up neither the author nor the title before plunging in. In retrospect, a wise choice.

I would not recommend reading this book for the puzzle element at all. But it’s still an enjoyable read because of the great characters and how well the author has captured what it feels like to be an innocent guest in a house where a murder has occurred. Very often, murder mysteries inhabit a make-believe world, where people come down for breakfast and lunch and go about their life as though nothing has happened.

This book shows how crime can affect every person involved, the innocent, the guilty, those peripherally involved, and even the people who live in the locality. There is something faintly Edwardian about the writer's style, but also some surprisingly modern undertones.

Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh (1943)

Who lured the hated businessman Maurice Questing to a horrible death in the geothermal bubbling mud of a health spa in Rotorua, New Zealand?

As I wrote in this episode, I have a complicated relationship with the works of Dame Ngaio Marsh. She writes THE BEST first-halves of mystery novels but unfortunately, cannot keep up readers’ interest during the investigation. The solutions are almost always competent and satisfactory… never brilliant. But if ever one of her books came close to brilliance, it’s this one.

An unusual setting (made even more interesting because my mother visited Rotorua this year and sent me pictures of the bubbling mud puts, which made the book come alive), great characters, and Ngaio’s understated humour are all highlights. This is one of my favourite passages from the book:

But most importantly, the key element on which the murder plot hinges, is something unusual that I don’t think any other Golden Age writer has used. Its effect might be dulled today but I can imagine it causing a sensation in 1943, when this book was published. In any case, Goodreads tells me Ngaio considered this her best-written novel. I’m not surprised.

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That brings me to the end of my list. I’ll close with this picture of a fantastic 1000-piece Miss Marple jigsaw puzzle that I spent Christmas week doing. I didn’t have a table big enough for this at home and had to take the puzzle with me on my holiday. The little house we stayed in had a large outdoor dining table next to a fig tree and I put the pieces together to the sound of warblers, bulbuls, and barbets. It was challenging (read: backbreaking) but tremendously fun, with 50+ Easter eggs from Agatha’s various stories.