The best novels grab your interest and keep you riveted until the very end

Michael Connelly continues to hit it out of the park when it comes to police procedurals. The Dark Hours is the fourth of his five novels about a young LAPD detective, Renee Ballard, who works “the late show” (the nighttime hours) and catches a midnight murder. She seeks assistance from a friend—the semi-retired detective, Harry Bosch—in working the case. I’ve read every one of Connelly’s Bosch Series books and have loved them all. Once you become involved and engrossed—usually by the third page—you cannot stop reading! Connelly’s novels are that good. 

The Code Breaker is the latest masterwork by the master book builder, Walter Isaacson. Isaacson’s books are long and rich with detail, but every detail is fascinating and necessary for understanding the main characters: what they do, and why they do it. I’ve read Isaacson’s books on Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. This book is about Jennifer Doudna (pronounced “Dowd-nuh”), a biotech scientist. In collaboration with a French scientist, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Doudna discovered a way (called “CRISPR”) to edit DNA, the so-called “code of life,” and they jointly won the Nobel Prize. If you are at all interested in science and how scientists do their thing, you cannot find a better read than this latest Isaacson blockbuster. Although the subjects are complex, Isaacson writes in our layman’s language. 

Linda Castillo is a master of the Amish whodunnit, having written fifteen books in a series staged in Amish country and culture. I’ve read five of them. Her characters are vivid and come alive on the page. The Hidden One, this latest “novel of suspense,” is written in the first person by her protagonist, Kate Burkholder, Chief of Police in Painters Mill, Ohio. Before you realize it, you are in Kate’s mind, trying to make sense of the many clues—bits and pieces of information—that make up a mosaic. All this is delivered up in what I would venture to say is a “woman writer’s touch”—with sensitivity and a warm heart.

The Cold Dish is the first in a mystery series by Craig Johnson about Walter Longmire, sheriff of the fictitious Absaroka County in the northeast corner of Wyoming. Walt’s character is so real he jumps off the page. I read four of the fourteen-book series after binging on the sixty-episode Netflix TV series, Longmire. Walt is a quiet, yet assertive John Wayne-type western hero who is smart as a whip and gets his man, though the odds are often deeply against him. The stories—murder mysteries mostly—are fascinating and include, in addition to his daughter and the three other members of the Sheriff’s Department, a modern interaction with American Indians on the “rez”—the local Indian Reservation.

I read this book before seeing the movie and I’m glad I did. In this, her debut novel, Delia Owens paints an astonishingly real word picture of the marshlands along the North Carolina coast, where her main character, the unschooled, preteen Kya, hides away from Social Services. Kya says to her only friend, a teenage boy Tate, ”I’m scared they’ll pull me in like a trout, put me in a foster home or sump’n.” Smiling, Tate replies, “Well, we better hide away out there where the crawdads sing. I pity any foster parents who take you on.” The story revolves around the accusation of murder by this lonely girl, who is marsh-smart and has taught herself to read and write with a bit of Tate’s help. One can’t help but silently cheer for her every step of her way.