murder mystery

Book Review: A TRADE OF BLOOD by Robert Jackson Bennett

| Jessica Crawford

A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett is the third book in the Ana and Din Mysteries series, formerly known as the Shadow of the Leviathan series. It is 400 pages and was published by Del Rey in August of 2026.

Genre

Fantasy, Mystery

This post will discuss the series as a whole before focusing on the latest installment.

The Ana and Din Mysteries, featuring an investigative duo that have often been compared to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, are first and foremost murder mysteries unfolding in a fantasy setting with some hefty worldbuilding. Each book’s plot follows these two unraveling the puzzle behind a grisly murder that often winds up with far-reaching political implications. Additionally, each addresses the nature of civilization and the question of whether people exist to serve their nation, or vice versa.

The Empire of Khanum is arranged like a succession of spoked wheels, with the the wealthiest citizens living in the center, the farthest from the outer ring’s sea walls. This is because every wet season, leviathans surface from the deep and try to breach the walls, destroying everything in their path. Branches of the military are dedicated to shoring up and defending the wall from the monstrous titans. Some people who serve the empire are given grafts or suffusions, altering their abilities in specific ways. Our main character, Din, is an engraver; he has been cerebrally altered to have a perfect eidetic memory of everything he sees and hears. He carries little vials of different scents with him to use as cues to associate with particular memories. With this ability, he acts as the eyes and ears of the exceedingly eccentric, and brilliant, Ana, the investigator to whom he is apprenticed.

Each entry in the series offers clever and twisty mysteries, the charming and hilarious relationship and banter between irreverent Ana and sincere Din, and lessons that go beyond magical mayhem to say something about the ills that come part and parcel with society.

And of course, the series has wonderful representation and inclusion.

If these things sounds like your jam and you haven’t yet picked up this series, what are you even doing?!

Now on to the specifics of Book 3, A Trade of Blood.

Description

Brilliant detective Ana Dolabra must prove a man’s innocence to stop a civil war in the third book of the series that began with The Tainted Cup, named an Edgar, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award Finalist and one of the best books of the year (New York Times Book Review, NPR, Elle)—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.

In the canton of Sapirdad, two of the Empire’s most powerful families are moments away from going to war with each other, their hundreds of retainers gathered with swords drawn. If blood is spilt, the whole of the empire may be plunged into starvation and chaos.

To de-escalate matters, someone must do the impossible: prove that one family’s eldest son is innocent of a gruesome and unforgivable murder, despite the incontrovertible evidence against him.

It is with this undertaking that the great detective Ana Dolabra is tasked, her assistant Din at her side—and the two find themselves racing with great speed and little dignity to the scene.

As ever, the impossible proves little obstacle for the deadly combination of Ana’s intellect and Din’s keen eye, and mere hours after riding into the dusty town, Ana glimpses the greater pattern behind the crime. A deeper, subtler web of death is being woven in plain sight, by a mastermind with an ancient magical technology at his disposal.

But even Ana’s uncanny insight is of little use when each new suspect she uncovers ends up dead–with each new killing calculated to bring tensions between the two rival clans past the boiling point. And as Din pursues their adversary through the canton’s wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses, he finds his loyalties divided in unexpected ways.

Opening Line

“It is an inarguable truth, you know,” said Ana, “that most people are absolutely enthralled by dead girls.”

My Thoughts

This is another interesting and complex murder mystery for Ana and Din to solve in the fantasy world of the Shadow of the Leviathan series that began with The Tainted Cup and continued with A Drop of Corruption.

Our beloved duo is sent to a new location in the third ring of the Empire to investigate what appears to be a clear cut murder between two gentry clans, although this time things seem a little too pat to be left unquestioned. And once again, the story furthermore touches on some philosophical topics and those regarding the ills of society and potential pitfalls inherent in great civilizations.

“How you’ve grown,” I said softly.
“Is dread the same as maturity?”
I filled my glass. “In the Empire, perhaps.”

I have to say, even though the murder mystery that serves as the impetus of this adventure was compelling, it’s the world-building that really hits for me here—specifically the lore surrounding the history of the Empire, its founders, and its pantheons. But the fact that this murder utilizes a feature that often seems to really work for me in my fiction (this part is discovered early in the investigation, not to mention shows up in the cover illustration, but fair warning for readers who like to avoid anything even a hint spoilery, I’m referring here to parasitic fungal horror) serves as an added bonus. This time we get to meet one of Din’s family members. And though the interactions between the eccentric and foul-mouthed Ana and her straightman assistant are perhaps growing a bit stale, they continue to offer some levity amidst murder and a dark lesson about so-called civilized people being all too willing to tolerate the suffering of those they deem inferior for the sake of maintaining their own creature comforts. I do feel bits of the mystery were a little easier to unravel on my own this time, and I wasn’t sure I felt Din needed another dalliance at this point in the series, but the latter at least was a nice opportunity to present this bit:

Though a voice had spoken within me—not my memories, merely my experience—whispering: These things never last.
To which I had responded: Nothing does.

In all, this was an engaging story that was further enhanced by the new things revealed about the Empire and its history, and I will be happy to see where the series takes readers next.

Thank you to Del Rey and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

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Book Review: HOW TO CHEAT YOUR OWN DEATH by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin is the third book in the Castle Knoll Files series of murder mysteries. It’s a 336 page novel to be published by Dutton on April 28, 2026.

Genre

Mystery

Description

From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, two interlocking mysteries decades apart unfold in this latest instalment in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling Castle Knoll Murder Mystery series

Some secrets are deadlier than others

1968: Frances Adams is loving her new London life, and she’s stepped into a world of glamour thanks to her new friend, Vera Huntington–a magnetic socialite as mysterious as she is provocative. Vera dances around London like she owns it, taking Frances with her.

Present day: When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her famous artist mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Laura’s new protégée, left in an alley with her heart surgically removed from her chest.

Annie is no stranger to murder–after all, she’s solved a few already. And something about this case feels familiar. She’s read about one just like it in the journals of her late great aunt Frances, whose friend Vera was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way.

As Annie investigates, threats pile up on Laura’s doorstep, and it soon becomes clear that she’s next. With her mother’s life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it’s too late?

Opening Line

The neon lights of Soho bounced off the autumn puddles, their reflections half interrupted by the steady droplets of freezing rain.

My Thoughts

I think this was my favorite entry in the Castle Knoll Files so far!

Or, possibly, I now just have a greater appreciation for skilled writing and plots not riddled with holes when it comes to my reading of mysteries.

Either way, How to Cheat Your Own Death, book three in the series, is an engaging murder mystery that once again alternates between Annie Adams investigating with Rowan Crane in current times and the journal entries of her Great Aunt Frances that are tied to the case in some way. This one takes place in London, where Annie’s famous artist mother has welcomed her absent father back into their lives and has also taken on an apprentice in an uncharacteristic move. Laura Adams begins receiving threats in the form of animal hearts left on her doorstep, and then someone turns up murdered and dumped in her trash receptacle. As Annie and Crane work to figure out what happened, they also puzzle through what it might have to do with Frances’s history with a wealthy family in the 1960s, a murdered socialite, and a local art gallery.

I was intrigued with the threads of story around the paintings and Frances’s time as a university psychology student. There are some fascinating characters here, as well as some truly awful ones. There is also some movement on the romance front in this installment.

This book kept me up late to continue plowing through its pages to learn the truth. I will happily read any more that follow in the series!

My gratitude to Dutton and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: HOW TO SEAL YOUR OWN FATE by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristen Perrin is a 320 page novel, the second in the Castle Knoll Files series, from PENGUIN GROUP Dutton with a publish date of April 29, 2025.

Genre:

Mystery

Synopsis:

Kristen Perrin is back with the second novel in her Castle Knoll series. Annie Adams is caught in a new web of murder that spans decades, returning us to the idyllic English village that holds layers of secrets.

Present Annie Adams is just settling into life in Castle Knoll when local fortune teller Peony Lane crosses her path and shares a cryptic message. When Peony Lane is found dead only hours later inside the locked Gravesdown Estate, Annie quickly realizes that someone is out to make her look guilty while silencing Peony at the same time. Annie has no choice but to delve into the dark secrets of Castle Knoll in order to find out just what Peony Lane was trying to warn her about, before the new life she’s just begun to build comes crashing down around her.

1967: A year has passed since her friend Emily disappeared, and teenage Frances Adams finds herself caught between two men. Ford Gravesdown is one of the only remaining members of a family known for its wealth and dubious uses of power. Archie Foyle is a local who can’t hold down a job and lives above the village pub. But when Frances teams up with Archie to investigate the car crash that claimed the lives of Ford’s family, it quickly becomes clear that this was no accident—hints of cover-ups, lies, and betrayals abound. The question is, just how far does the blackness creep through the heart of Castle Knoll? When Frances uncovers secrets kept by both Ford and Archie, she starts to What exactly has she gotten herself into?

Opening Line:

Her name had always been too plain, she thought, as she looked at the prison register in front of her, which required her signature.

My Thoughts:

This was another engaging murder mystery in the Castle Knoll Files.

I do think I would have benefitted from rereading How to Solve Your Own Murder before jumping into this one, to better remember the characters we were previously introduced to, their relationships and motivations. In general they are an interesting collection of folk from a seemingly idyllic English countryside, one of whom offers the possibility of a future romance for our main character, Annie.

This time, it’s the intriguing figure of Peony Lane, the fortune teller who set Great Aunt Frances on her life’s course of trying to solve her own murder before it occurred, that gets caught up in the middle of the action. What might she have to do the Foyles, Sparrows, as well as the Gravesdowns of yore? And why do these crimes always seem to come knocking right at Annie’s door?

Alternating chapters between Annie’s current timeline (in present tense POV) and young Frances’s diary entries got a bit confusing to me, as both included many of the same characters and events, and so it became difficult to keep straight who already knew what in their respective investigations. And the particulars of this mystery wind up being quite convoluted and at times a bit of a stretch.

That being said, I was still definitely entertained by this contemporary whodunnit, and would happily read the next installment of Annie’s adventures in investigating secrets in order to solve crimes.

Thank you to Dutton, Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED by Frances White

| Jessica Crawford

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White is a standalone debut novel published in 2024.

Genre:

Fantasy

Subgenres:

Young Adult, Queer Romance, Murder Mystery

Opening Line:

My father always said: ‘You can’t run from your responsibilities,’ but he lacks imagination.

My Thoughts:

Confession: I bought this book solely because of how pretty it was.

Now that VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED by Frances White is a nominee in two categories of the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards, I picked it up from my TBR stack. For the first chapter or two, I didn’t think it was going to be my jam, but I did wind up enjoying it quite a bit for what it was.

This book is YA Gideon the Ninth.

The young scions of each of the twelve provinces of the empire of Concordia are stuck on a ship with one another when they start dying mysteriously one by one. Each of them has their own special power (Blessing), as well as a hair and eye color based on their province (i.e. all people from Ox Province have red hair and red eyes, while everyone from Tiger Province has blue hair, etc.). The super snarky underdog queer main character has to figure out what’s really going on in this locked room murder mystery with magic.

This book thinks it is adult (and it is a nominee in the Fantasy category of the Goodreads Choice Awards, not Young Adult Fantasy), and so there are F-bombs and other curse words sprinkled throughout, plus plenty of sexual innuendo. But the tone and writing style were very young adult. I thought the main character was a teenager, until a good while in he tells someone he is twenty-two and a quarter. You know who describes their age using quarters? Children. All of the other characters are of a similar age and act pretty young.

The worldbuilding does not stand up to any amount of scrutiny whatsoever. But as long as you’re willing to just take it at its word and enjoy the ride, this is a fun story with lots of magic and murder, and a queer romance to boot. And that’s just what I was able to do – not question things too much, and have a good time!

Book Review: THE TAINTED CUP by Robert Jackson Bennett

| Jessica Crawford
Shadow of the Leviathan #1

This engaging and original story is the first in a new fantasy series by the author of The Founders trilogy.

Buckle in and prepare yourself for some hefty worldbuilding, but part of what was admirable about this book was the fresh and unique setting. The Empire of Khanum is arranged like a succession of spoked wheels, with the the wealthiest citizens living in the center, the farthest from the outer ring’s sea walls. This is because every wet season, leviathans surface from the deep and try to breach the walls, destroying everything in their path. Branches of the military are dedicated to shoring up and defending the wall from the monstrous titans.

Some people who serve the empire are given grafts or suffusions, altering their abilities in specific ways. Our main character, Din, is an engraver; he has been cerebrally altered to have a perfect eidetic memory of everything he sees and hears. He carries little vials of different scents with him to use as cues to associate with particular memories. With this ability, he acts as the eyes and ears of the exceedingly eccentric, and brilliant, Ana, the investigator to whom he is newly apprenticed apprenticed.

“He’s new,” said Ana, “and big, and I think he lost his sense of humor in some tragic accident. But he helped me solve the Blas issue quick enough.” Then, simply, “He is good.”

The bulk of this novel focuses on a murder investigation Ana and Din undertake, one that winds up with far-reaching political implications. But there’s also a lot about the uncertainties of living in a world that is routinely under threat, not only by the titans of the sea, but also contagion, worms, and a host of other worries. It addresses the nature of civilization, and the question of whether people exist to serve their Empire, or vice versa.

One of the highlights of this book is the relationship and banter between Ana and Din (and a few other characters introduced during their investigative proceedings), which are charming and often downright hilarious. Ana is irreverent, Din is sincere.

“Just wish to comment, ma’am,” I said, “that, ah, I’ve no idea at all what’s going on anymore.”

And as if all of that wasn’t enough to secure a place for this book in my esteem, is also included great representation: of disability and neurodiversity, plus the minor romance included was queer.

“…if I hadn’t been the person that I was, then the alterations would not have been a success. It was my choice. I changed and became, I self-assembled. Just as you have done.”

I highly recommend this refreshing and entertaining tale of a murder mystery that unfolds in a new and interesting fantasy world, and I can’t wait to read about what Ana and Din get mixed up in next.

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