Interesting cover design here

[conuly]

The cover screams YA, but the book is solidly middle grade - I'm three pages in and we've established that the main character is in the 4th grade and her sister is 14.

I still enjoy middle grade books (and middle grade realistic/contemporary is more likely to appeal than YA or, god forbid, adult realistic/contemporary*) and I legit thought this was misshelved when I picked it up.

* Unless it's a murder mystery, in which case I may like it quite a bit. Which makes me wonder, why aren't there more sci-fi/fantasy murder mystery series? Historical fiction has its own niche there. Hm...

Comments

[shadowkat]

Which makes me wonder, why aren't there more sci-fi/fantasy murder mystery series?

Good question. The only ones that I've seen are noirish sci-fi thrillers or horror sci-fi, and they don't really strike me as mysteries. (Such as Levithan Wakes in the Expanse series, and Demolished Man by Bester.)

[conuly]

Yeah. I want sci-fi cozies, but I'd settle for hard boiled fantasy detectives without too much snark and irony. (Except that which is inherent to the hard boiled detective genre, I mean. It just shouldn't all be winking about "look, we mashed up two incompatible genres and here's a new pun!" and whatever.)

[author_by_night]

adult realistic/contemporary

Betty Sue hasn't spoken to her sister in thirty years. Shocking news causes her to get back in touch.

Paula May gets a call from her sister. Can she let it go?

A riveting tale of tawdry affairs, diseases that readers love being reminded of in their attempt at escapism, what's obviously a love triangle, convoluted misunderstandings that could have been solved if someone had just picked up the phone, and finding love in places that were obvious from the first damn sentence of the novel.


Yeah, I see what you mean.

Okay, they're not all like that, but so many are. One time I swear five books I looked at in a row had... basically that description. In all fairness, some people love that stuff. I... do not. I don't mind all realistic contemporary, I just find a lot of it gets very ABCLifeMark.* Even historical fiction sometimes does this if the book goes back and forth between the past and the present.

*ABC Family/Lifetime/Hallmark.

[conuly]

My consolation is that realistic/contemporary written by/for men isn't any better.

[cosmolinguist]

My husband has written a sci-fi murder mystery. :) It's called The Basilisk Murders and I think it's pretty great despite my biases.

[chelseagirl]

Not to be contradictory because I understand what you mean, but I kind of feel like mystery plots pop up in sf/f, in litfic, all over the place -- like essentially murder is the one thing everyone finds compelling.

Working on a historical mystery at the moment, actually . . .

[flexagon]

Someone just gave me Six Wakes by Muir Lafferty, which is totally a whodunit with clones in a spaceship. I haven't read it yet, though.

[nepece]

Have you read any Asimov? His first two Robot books, The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, are fair-play whodunnit murder mysteries, and the third, The Robots of Dawn, is a non-fair-play murder mystery.

I personally enjoyed them, although they have all the racism and sexism that old SF written by white men generally has.

[conuly]

I have, but they really haven't aged well.

[kengr]

Randall Garret's "Lord Darcy" books are fantasy mysteries (and many of the stories are murder mysteries).

Thing is, with both SF & Fantasy, the author has to work a lot harder because he has to casually let the reader know what *isn't* possible without breaking the mood, or dropping into lecture mode.

[kutsuwamushi]

Ghosts in the Snow by Tamara Siler Jones is a fantasy murder mystery - if I'm not misremembering.

I read it so many years ago that I don't remember anything about it, except that I was surprised by the genre. I haven't read anything like it since.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

There's a JAG in SPACE series, for all your Naval Navel needs. ;) (Damn, there apparently is a series that actually calls itself that; I'm probably thinking of one by Baen, though?)

[conuly]

Just to be clear, it's fantasy for more than the fact that it has ghosts, right? Because murder mystery + ghosts is practically a staple of the genre and therefore doesn't count.

[landofnowhere]

Have you read And Then there Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker? (The SF element is in the setting: protagonist attends a convention where all the attendees are versions of her from different timelines. Novella length, was nominated for Hugo and Nebula.)

I think there's a decent amount of murder mystery in urban fantasy settings: Harry Dresden, of course, though I mostly haven't read it, some but not all of the October Daye series.

Carol Berg writes some good pseudo-medieval/Renaissance fantasy series with strong mystery elements. On the other hand she's less good at writing series-ending books. Her best books are the duology Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone: the first half of the first book is a monastery murder mystery before the plot expands to larger-scale politics. Other books to read for the mystery elements: Dust and Light: protagonist with magical gift for portraiture works with a coroner to solve mysteries (there's a sequel which sadly splits up the team). Also, the first two books of the Collegia Magica trilogy: The Spirit Lens and The Soul Mirror: despite the title, the plot is mostly spies investigating court intrigue. Those two should be read together as not all of the mysteries introduced in the first book are fully resolved until the second, but the third book is skippable.

[conuly]

1. Oooh, I did and I had forgotten about it!

2. I'll admit, (contemporary) urban fantasy isn't my normal read, so if you say there's a ton of murder mystery there, I'll believe you. (Wait, is it still urban fantasy if it's not contemporary?)

[malkingrey]

why aren't there more sci-fi/fantasy murder mystery series

Among all the other reasons -- because it's an inherently difficult thing. As I've observed elsewhere:

A mystery reader, confronted with a large mass of sudden detail, is going to go—subconsciously, at least—”Aha! somewhere in all of this the writer has planted a Clue!”, and look for that; a reader trained exclusively in mainstream literary fiction is likely to say, “Aha! all this emphasis must point to something of Thematic Importance!”, but an experienced reader of science fiction is going to assume that he or she is meant to take all of those details and out of them construct a world.

Which is why the writer of a science-fiction mystery with literary ambitions is trying to do a quadruple somersault off the trapeze without a net.

[katiedid717]

What book's cover are you talking about?

[deird1]

Yeah, I bought Leviathan Wakes hoping it would be a murder mystery. Well written as it is, horror is not a genre I like.

[fred_mouse]

I loved Six Wakes! It was very satisfying to read, as the various threads were carefully unspooled for the reader. So much carefully planned backstory.

[fred_mouse]

That quoted paragraph explains so much, thank you. And to some extent completely explains my relationship with each of those genres.

mystery series of SF

[bibliofile]

Possibly cheating -- or simply great on all the trapezes -- is Kristine Katherine Rusch, who has written mysteries and speculative fiction, in general. She combined them in the Retrieval Artist series, apparently up to fifteen books now? They often take place on the Moon, which is one of many places in space (i.e., not Earth) where humans live. I enjoyed the first several.

Her mysteries were okay, too.

[archangelbeth]

(You've read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36686547-the-tea-master-and-the-detective , right?)

[conuly]

You might try The City and The City, though that turned out not to have any non-realistic elements at all.

[conuly]

Good summation, but you lose points for not stating "As you know, Connie" at the beginning of that second sentence.

[conuly]

Yeah, but if they stick the landing it is AWESOME.

[conuly]

If I'm not saying something terribly complimentary about a book, I usually don't spell out the title. I hadn't read this one yet, and I didn't want to run the risk that I'd hate it and end up having to trash it by name.

In this case, though, I mostly enjoyed it though the protagonist was thoroughly unpleasant for most of the story. Which is her whole damn character arc, plus dealing with everything she's handling + uncontrolled diabetes is bound to make anybody pissy, so I guess I can excuse age-appropriate bad behavior in a protagonist: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074JL3YQY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

[quantumcupcakes]

a hardboiled detective story in a hard sci-fi setting would basically be my husband's ideal book

[jesse_the_k]

Wait, what? The ability to magically unsee people because of their political/caste membership is realistic?

[conuly]

People carefully ignore things all the time so... yeah?

[conuly]

Noooooooo but it's on my list now!

[conuly]

Noted.

[conuly]

Yeah, but you know what I mean so I won't leave a comment saying that.

[conuly]

YES.

[kutsuwamushi]

It's set in a full-on fantasy world where sorcery exists and people live in castles. That's why I remember it. I don't think the actual worldbuilding or story was that memorable, but the combination of genres stood out because it is pretty rare.

[archangelbeth]

I liked it, so I hope you do as well!

Edit: You might also look at the short story, http://www.abyssapexzine.com/2012/09/lace-downstairs/ , though it's more Noir Detective SF. There's a Fade To Black shower scene.

[shadowkat]

Yep, it was more of a horror novel than a mystery novel. More "Alien" or "Annihilation" than "Minority Report". Philip K. Dick sort of did a few.
But most of them seem to be like Andromeda Strain -- which is figuring out a puzzle before the population is decimated -- which I love, but horror often is the main ingredient.

And I'm ...ambivalent about horror. It tends to be depressing.

[shadowkat]

It just shouldn't all be winking about "look, we mashed up two incompatible genres and here's a new pun!" and whatever.)

Yep, I'm guessing you may have read the latter Dresden Files? They were less pun-happy early on.

Nora Roberts sort of does the sci-fi cozies with the JD Robb series. (I haven't read them, but I don't like Nora Roberts, others do though.)

Most sci-fi seems to into space opera, dystopia, alien-human or robot-human romance, horror, or speculative/philosophizing. The mysteries that I've found tend to be mash-ups of one of those four. I'm sort of writing a mystery sci-fi myself -- but it admittedly has the space opera/romance aspects to it.

[conuly]

No, but I've read other stories in that vein.

And, you know, I don't mind puns. I like puns! But you need a little more there.