I hope this request isn’t too specific, but are there any mystery books or series that:
* are primarily **not** about murder, the drug trade, or financial/white collar crimes
* have a main character who is **not** a lawyer/prosecutor or working for the police/FBI/other government agency
* do **not** have any supernatural or sci-fi elements
I was thinking of something where the main character is an amateur detective or just a random person sucked into solving a mystery, trying to unravel a family secret, mysterious past, missing person case, corruption scandal, other odd occurrence, or anything at all so long as it’s primarily not murder, the drug trade, or white collar crime.
by zephrry
2 Comments
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There’s the Mobile Library series by **Ian Sansom** from HarperCollins (a couple are made available to borrow via Freading/Hoopla/other library ebook services), starting with _The Case of the Missing Books_. It’s a kind of quirky cozy-ish series starring a fish out of water Jewish English librarian transplanted to a small town in Northern Ireland and experiencing some culture shock. I haven’t read all of them, but so far the cases have been non-murder, focusing on assorted forms of theft and missing persons and local interpersonal drama, and the blurbs for the rest don’t mention any suspicious deaths.
This one is an historical and centred around a missing persons case: _Search the Seven Hills: The Quirinal Hill Affair_ by **Barbara Hambly** (ebook reprint also borrowable). It takes place in ancient Rome, and the MC is the black sheep philosophy student son of a patrician family, who’s trying to recover the kidnapped daughter of the neighbouring family who’s also a childhood friend. It’s structured more as an investigative mystery than a thriller, with him playing amateur sleuth tracking down clues and leads. It’s a standalone (there was set up near the end hinting at the MC turning pro, but apparently it was never picked up for a sequel which is a shame, because Hambly is one of my favourite authors and this is one of my favourite books of hers).
This is on my TBR and I haven’t actually read it yet/can’t vouch for the quality, but if you think you might be interested: _The Mystery of Henri Pick_ by award-winning French literary novelist **David Foenkinos**. An old rejected manuscript is discovered and becomes a bestselling book. The author, a deceased pizza chef, becomes the subject of scrutiny, with some claiming it’s a literary hoax because this ordinary guy supposedly wrote a hidden masterpiece, and a journalist gets caught up in investigating it all.
Hope this helps!