It is with great pleasure that I welcome a new author to the mystery genre: Minerva Koenig. In Nine Days, she creates truly memorable characters and a quick-turn-that-page story. Julia Kalas is staring down forty and is not a completely socially acceptable dress size. An expert house renovator and remodeler, she is now in the federal witness protection program after the Aryan Brotherhood ends her husband's gun running business and life. Ending up in a pimple on the back of beyond, AKA Azula, Texas, she puts her criminal instincts to work when a law enforcement official is murdered and the man she's attracted to is set to take the rap. There are also seedy real estate deals, the War On Drugs, and Bolivian death practices to spice up the storyline. You really don't see the ending coming. Other attributes include a great sense of place, gritty situations, witty descriptions, and family drama to make the Greeks jealous.
Linda Fairstein writes a long-running series on the opposite side of the law and country starring Alexandra Cooper, an assistant D.A. for New York. Again, there is grit here and unlike some mystery characters, Cooper and her colleagues are responsible for more than one case at a time, which is how it works out in real life. In each book, Fairstein takes a New York City landmark and sets the mystery around that. You end up learning a good deal about that particular place, especially the dark stuff. Cooper also has a personal life, the progress of which may mean you want to read these books in sequence. With 16 books in the series, that may seem like a tall order, but these mysteries go by fast. Final Jeopardy is the first in the series, and the one recommended to start with.
Judy Clemens writes the Grim Reaper mysteries, in which Casey Maldonado goes from pillar to post after a car accident kills her family. She is accompanied by Death, whom she can see because she is not afraid of him. While I would generally cast this series as dark, Death, of all beings, provides a good comic line. Casey travels the country trying to outrun her past, but seems to get in trouble no matter where she goes. In the latest novel, Dying Echo, Casey returns to her hometown to get her brother out of trouble and ends up facing some of her demons. If you like your protagonists with baggage, a dark worldview, and mordant humor, this is the series for you.
Want more tough broads? Here are my posts on the Mercy Thompson series and the Jimm Juree mysteries.
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