Five subtly paranormal mysteries

Amanda Chapman is a lifelong mystery lover and wordsmith. An enthusiastic fan of traditional mysteries and of New York City, she found herself wondering, “What if someone recreated Agatha Christie’s personal library—even to the furnishings and architecture—in New York City? What would happen in that space?” And thus Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library—the first in a new series—was born.

At CrimeReads Chapman tagged five "subtly paranormal myster[ies], in which little more is asked of the skeptical reader except a certain suspension of disbelief." One title on the list:

The Secret Place by Tana French

This fifth book in Tana French’s superb Dublin Murder Squad series takes place in St. Kilda’s, a posh girl’s boarding school where a year earlier a boy was found murdered in a case that was never solved. A year after Chris Harper’s body was found, the investigation is cold—until a St. Kilda’s girl brings Detective Stephen Moran a photo and a note she’s found on the school’s “Secret Place” bulletin board, with the words “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.” Moran is thrilled to be assigned to work with Senior Detective Antoinette Conway when the case is reopened. But he is hard-pressed to see his way through the weird and claustrophobic maze of an almost-too-closely-knit group of friends, their rival clique, and the tangle of relationships that bound them all to the murdered boy.

The structure of the book—told over the course of one day, as each of the girls involved is interviewed by Moran and Conway and flashbacks provide disturbing glimpses of the past—is masterful. The girls are convinced of their shared ability to lift objects and manipulate lights with their minds, and French, a master of ambiguity, leaves it up to the reader to decide: Were these genuine supernatural occurrences or shared psychological hallucinations? Or something more tangible? Either way, it’s downright eerie.

Read about the other titles on Chapman's list at CrimeReads.

The Secret Place is among Stephanie Barron's seven great mystery novels set in academe, Davida G. Breier's nine titles featuring teens behaving badly, C. J. Cooke's eight thrillers & mysteries with underlying supernatural elements, Cambria Brockman's five thrillers featuring a small group of friends, Adele Parks's eight crime novels featuring intense female friendship, Kristen Lepionka's ten top female detectives in fiction, the B&N Reads editors' five favorite fun, fearless femmes fatales in fiction, and Kelly Anderson's seven amazing female friendships in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue