Crime Fiction: Part I of a list of whodunits for murder mystery fans ...

In a stately West Village town house, a wealthy socialite and her secretary are murdered. In the 24 hours that follow, a flurry of activity surrounds their shocking deaths: The head of one of the city's last tabloids stops the presses. A cop investigates the killing. A reporter chases the story. A disgraced hedge fund manager flees the country. An Iraq War vet seeks revenge. And an angry young extremist plots a major catastrophe.

With Twelve Drummers Drumming, the first in the series where each book is based on a verse of the carol, Tom Christmas discovers the body of a young woman stowed inside a taiko drum at the village hall. The death is soon ruled a homicide, but for Tom her death is as much a puzzle as the disappearance of the previous pastor. The town is shaken, motives surface, and everyone is a suspect.

In 14th-century Italy, Mondino is a university anatomist - a man of science in a land governed by the brutal Inquisition. But the corpse brought to Mondino’s laboratory one stormy night defies natural law: The victim is a Templar knight, and his heart has been transformed into a block of iron. Is it alchemy? Or the diabolical work of an ingenious killer? Aided by his headstrong student Gerardo - a young man concealing a deadly secret identity – Mondino must outwit both ruthless Inquisitors and vengeful Templars if he’s to stop a murderer who threatens to shake the very foundations of Christendom.

California PI Kinsey Millhone investigates the death of Audrey Vance, a woman she helped arrest for shoplifting, and antagonizes just about everyone, including Audrey’s fiancé, several loan sharks, a stone-cold killer, and a hapless burglar who knows more than is healthy for him.

In the stunning climax to Rendell’s classic A Sight for Sore Eyes, three bodies – two dead, one living – are entombed in an underground chamber beneath a picturesque London house. Twelve years later, when a manhole cover is pulled back, the house’s new owner makes a grisly discovery. Only now, the number of bodies is four. With their own detectives at an impasse, police call on former Chief Inspector Wexford, now retired and living with his wife in London, to advise them on the unsolved murders. Wexford’s dogged detective skills and knack for figuring out the criminal mind take him to London neighborhoods, posh and poor, as he follows a complex criminal trail back to the original murders.

April Moss writes obituaries for the Miami Herald. Her son, Sawyer, also a writer, has been scripting a cable TV series called “Miami Ops” and has been using his mother’s work as a central element of the show's storyline. In “Miami Ops,” a serial killer is using obituaries published in the local paper as a blueprint for selecting his next victims. But midway through the season, a copycat appears off-screen, a real-life killer who is using the same strategy to select victims. When this serial killer crosses paths with the reclusive Florida PI Daniel Thorn, he has no choice but to leave his sanctuary in Key Largo and join forces with a young policewoman from Oklahoma who is investigating the murders.

Freak weather and flash floods have hit southern England. The small cathedral town of Lafferton is underwater, and a landslip on the moor has closed the roads. As the rain slowly drains away, a shallow grave – and a skeleton – are exposed; 20 years on, the remains of missing teenager Joanne Lowther have finally been uncovered. The case is reopened and Simon Serrailler is called in as Senior Investigating Officer. Joanne, an only child, had been on her way home from a friend’s house that night. She was the daughter of a prominent local businessman, and her mother had killed herself two years after she disappeared, unable to cope. Cold cases are always tough, and in this latest mystery in the acclaimed series from Susan Hill, Simon Serrailler is forced to confront his most grisly, dangerous, and complex case yet.