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When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is the dead body of Laura’s new protégée. Annie is no stranger to solving murders, but something about this case feels eerily familiar. As Annie investigates, it soon becomes clear that Laura is the next target. With her mother’s life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it’s too late? Solve the case in HOW TO CHEAT YOUR DEATH by Kristen Perrin, available wherever books and audiobooks are sold.
Nowadays, we are getting some really innovative and fun mysteries and thrillers. We’ve seen the rise in locked-room and closed-circle mysteries, along with more science fiction and fantasy mysteries. My particular favorites are those with different narrative structures, such as multiple points of view or dual timelines that speed towards a murderous conclusion.
These dual (or more) timeline novels, also called interlocked mysteries, are particularly fascinating since they are part historical mystery/thriller and part multiple viewpoints. Often, we get two characters whose connection may not be apparent until later in the book, and the story may take place in one or more historical time periods. It’s a delightful combination.
It’s interesting that many dual-timeline books tend to be mystery thrillers rather than mysteries outright. Switching between two time periods is a great way to amp up the tension.
To celebrate the wondrous interlocked mystery, here are eight mysteries with dual or more timelines.
The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza
I cannot and will not stop telling people to read this book. When Aunt Rosie dies, she gives her niece Sara Marsala a ticket to return to the family’s ancestral village in Sicily. There, Sara is tasked with determining whether the family still owns its ancestral lands. But it’s also a mission to find out if Sara’s great-grandmother, Serafina, was murdered. We also get Serafina’s perspective in the early 20th century as she tries to carve out a living when her husband only finds work in other parts of Italy–and eventually the United States–leaving her to care for the home and their many children. The book will keep you on your toes. And the second best part of the book is that there’s a true crime podcast called The Sicilian Inheritance with author Jo Piazza trying to find out if her great-grandmother was murdered in the family’s ancestral town in Sicily.
Flux by Jinwoo Chong
While Piazza’s book looks to the past, Chong’s book looks to the future and the development of time travel. It then adds a dash of significant corporate misbehavior and murder with a touch of 1980s detective television shows. There are three narrative threads. There’s Bo, an eight-year-old boy who is dealing with the tragic death of his mother. Finding little support from his grieving family, he becomes obsessed with the 1980s detective show Raider. The story takes us to 28-year-old Brandon, who finds work at a mysterious tech startup, but he soon realizes something is wrong when pieces of his memory seem to go missing. In the third timeline, we’ve got Blue, who nearly died at the hands of a biotech startup called Flux. He’s active in a television series that seeks to reveal the company’s many wrongdoings and identify who is responsible for leaving him permanently disabled. What has/is happening? Will people find justice, or will the company get away with murder?
As Long As You’re Mine by Nekesa Afia
Author of the Harlem Renaissance series (starting with Dead Dead Girls), Nekesa Afia has also brought readers a dual timeline mystery set in 1930s Hollywood. Thea Ross, a ballerina, cannot accept that her famous actor father has killed himself and that he had anything to do with the death of a young aspiring actress several decades ago. But as Thea investigates the life of Lorelei Davies, a young Black actress who passes for white, she learns how vicious and exploitative the film industry can be to young women. Thea may find the truth, but she risks losing everything she’s ever known. The book alternates between Thea’s and Lorelei’s viewpoints.
Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Camille de Peretti
In 1910, Viennese painter Gustav Klimt painted a portrait of a woman, but no one knows who she is. Nearly 100 years ago, the painting was stolen, but then inexplicably returned to the museum in 2019. Inspired by the story, Camille de Peretti uses these broad facts to construct a narrative about the mysterious woman in the painting, along with accounts of the painting’s disappearance and reappearance. Told through several timelines, de Peretti imagines the lives of people around the painting, starting in Vienna in the 1900s, then moving to Manhattan during the Great Depression, and beyond. It’s a story about love, family, and secrets. It’s not a murder mystery, but it definitely has many delicious mysteries contained within.
The Perfect Guests by Emma Rous
Struggling actress Sadie Langton gets a gig as a guest for a murder mystery weekend party at the beautiful manor named Raven Hall. When she gets her character’s information, Sadie finds it odd that so many details seem to reflect her own life. Then things begin to happen to the other guests and the manor that make Sadie think this event is not just fun and games. The narrative also shifts to the story of Beth Soames, a young orphan raised by her aunt, who visits the manor and befriends the Averell family’s daughter. But then a game changes everything for Beth and the Averells forever. Will Sadie get to the bottom of the mysterious and threatening events at Raven Manor, and will Beth get past the events of that particular fateful summer?
Hollow Spaces by Victor Suthammanont
Their father, John Lo, may not have been convicted for the death of his affair partner, but the affair and the trial split the family apart. Thirty years after the trial, his daughter, Brennan, has decided to investigate the case to finally dispel the doubt surrounding her father’s acquittal. Her brother Hunter still believes their father was the murderer, but decides to help his sister find the truth. The hope is that it’ll bring the family together, rather than make the estrangement permanent. The story is split between their father’s point of view 30 years earlier and the siblings’ present-day investigation.
Time’s Undoing by Cheryl A. Head
When young reporter Meghan McKenzie is sent to Birmingham on a story about how the police interact with the Black community there, she decides it’s also a chance to investigate the violent death of her great-grandfather and his final resting place, 90 years before. The story is intertwined with the story of a young Black carpenter who moves his family to Birmingham, Alabama, since it is flush with jobs and opportunity (but also white supremacy). Set in the backdrop of Black Lives Matter and President Obama’s presidency, white supremacy is still alive and thriving. Some are determined to keep past crimes secret. Will McKenzie find out the truth, or will she, too, be silenced forever?
The Split by Kit Frick
One stormy summer night, Jane gets a call from her glamorous sister, Esme. She’s left her wealthy husband and needs Jane to pick her up. Now. But Jane is panic-stricken at getting behind the wheel during a storm. Does she go or does she wait? Does she acquiesce to her sister, as she always does, or does she put her foot down? Then the story splits into two timelines: one where Jane gets over her fears and picks Esme up, and another where she doesn’t and Esme goes missing. It’s a dual timeline that unfolds unusually. It will keep you reading to the last page as Jane begins to unravel Esme’s secrets, along with her own.
That’s eight interlocked mysteries and thrillers to keep you guessing. If you want more historical mysteries, here’s a list of 17 historical mysteries, or if you want dual timeline narratives, here’s an article for you!
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