5 Delightful Whodunits That Won’t Give You Nightmares
By Jo Firestone
I love reading murder mysteries, but I hate sleeping with the lights on. Maybe you’re in the same boat. Perhaps you want a fun and thrilling book to read, but you also want a peaceful night’s rest. If you hate peaceful rest, I recommend The Alienist by Caleb Carr or The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis, both kept me on edge for weeks.
In case you’re curious, here’s my rubric for what gives me nightmares:
blood and gore
humans eating other humans
a mysterious figure watching menacingly from a neighboring house
pets getting killed
demonic children
portals to hell
ghosts
serial killers
villains hiding in or around toilets (See: IT)
And here’s what keeps me in REM:
the murder weapon is something that can be bought at HomeGoods
characters stopping by other characters’ houses for dessert
expansive countrysides
pets staying alive
secret passageways
ghosts turning out to be alive people using magic tricks
the detective figuring out the case on their own and then waiting a few pages to explain it to the other characters
With all that said, here’s my list of five whodunits that didn’t give me nightmares and hopefully won’t give you nightmares either:
Great Aunt Frances is terrified by a fortune teller’s premonition that she’ll be murdered one day. It’s up to her great niece, Annie, to hopefully put the pieces together. This one’s got sprawling countryside estates, chess metaphors, journal entries from the murdered woman as a teenager. What more could you want? Five stars, no nightmares.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around March 26, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
A town tries to organize a community-wide appeal for a local charity case, but something’s very off. Hallett tells the story through the various characters’ emails, text messages, and correspondence. The twists! The turns! I loved it. Hallett also wrote The Christmas Appeal, which has a lot of the same delightful characters! Five stars, no nightmares.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 25, 2022. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
I am certain if you’re looking at this list, you’ve already read this one. I just gotta put it on here because if I didn’t, I’d be publicly egged. Four older people living in a retirement community ban together to solve a murder. Sometimes they stop for cake! It’s so much fun. And there’s three more books in the series! Five stars, no nightmares.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 3, 2021. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
This is the first book in the Kat Kelly series. A TV writer and her husband take a vacation in Italy, but when someone turns up dead, Kat Kelly can’t resist looking into it. The plot moves fast, and there’s delicious food and wine on almost every page. I don’t eat meat, but I found myself mesmerized by the beautiful descriptions of prosciutto. Five stars, no nightmares.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 9, 2020. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Dayna Anderson is a broke Hollywood actress who stumbles into being a detective for some extra cash. It’s book one of the Detective by Day series, so there’s more where this came from. An excellent, fast-moving send-up of the cesspool that is LA. Didn’t see the ending coming at all! Five stars! No nightmares!
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 8, 2017. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
When a cast member goes missing from the hit reality show Sex Island, producers hire detective Luella van Horn to go undercover as a contestant and solve the case. What the producers don’t know is that the enigmatic Luella van Horn is actually a woman named Marie Jones, a divorced ex-social worker from Staten Island attempting to lead a double life as a private eye. The local press couldn’t get enough of Luella . . . until she horribly bungled her last case and a murderer went free.
Unable to resist the opportunity to be a part of her favorite trashy TV show, travel to a remote island, and embark on a journey for redemption, Marie-as-Luella takes the case. But the more she learns about Sex Island‘s dark underbelly, the harder it gets to make it out alive. She encounters shady producers, sleazy directors, contestants willing to do whatever it takes to win the $100,000 grand prize–and the dead body of the show’s missing fan-favorite in her bathtub.
Will she find the killer? Will she find herself? Will she find . . . love?
Find out now, in Sex Island‘s most dramatic season yet.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 24, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
