Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman

Private detective Nils Shapiro is hired to assist the Edina Police Department with a murder investigation. Maggie Somerville has been found dead in her home with bags of vacuum cleaner dust surrounding her, which has ruined the chance of getting any decent evidence from the crime scene. Nils delves into Maggie's personal life--including her ex-husband, boyfriend, and a secret from her past that possibly has a connection to the crime. With a very likable main character that the reader enjoys following as he pursues the case, this is a promising new mystery series.  Suggest to readers who like Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch books.

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Anna Fox spends her days in her renovated Harlem home spying on her neighbors and watching old film noir movies. Suffering from agoraphobia, she lives on her own with a basement tenant named David. Missing her young daughter and husband, she is also drinking too much wine while taking several different medications. One evening, Anna is convinced that she saw a horrible crime happen to one of her neighbors, but after the police check it out, they find nothing. Despite this fact, Anna pushes forward, unwilling to believe the authorities. Is Anna correct about the incident or has spending so much time alone messed with her sense of reality? The Woman in the Window is a page turner similar to the novels of Paula Hawkins, Ruth Ware, and Peter Swanson. It will be published in January.

Proof of Life by J.A. Jance

Retired with lots of time on his hands, J.P. Beaumont agrees to look into the death of former adversary Maxwell Cole, who recently died in a house fire. A longtime friend of Cole's named Erin Howard had asked Beaumont to look into the circumstances around the fire, because she believes that it wasn't accidental, despite what the authorities are saying. With help from his wife, Mel, and his former contacts in the Seattle Police Department, Beaumont tries to uncover the truth for Erin. Proof of Life is the most recent book in Jance's J.P. Beaumont series and it's always so much fun to spend time with an old acquaintance.

Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson

When a sniper takes aim at a wedding, Detective Superintendent Banks and his colleagues wonder about who the targets are and about a possible motive. The clues are few and no one got a good look at the gunman. To try and unmask the killer, the police delve into the lives and pasts of the wedding party and their guests. In this latest book in the long-running series, Robinson puts together an interesting puzzle, and catching up with Banks and his colleagues is always a treat.

Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton

Kinsey is hired by the parents of Fritz McCabe to find out who's blackmailing them with a videotape of an assault that Fritz committed years ago. Fritz was actually just released from prison after serving ten years for a murder he committed while in high school. The assault and crime that he was convicted for involve the same set of people, so Kinsey finds herself really looking at both events, since they are interrelated. On a more personal front, Kinsey is on edge and constantly on guard, worried that killer Ned Lowe is after her. In the last book in the series, Ned succeeded in evading the authorities and is still on the run. In Y is for Yesterday, the reader goes between the current events happening in 1989 and those that occurred ten years earlier in 1979 with all the high school characters, including Fritz. While I really enjoyed the present story--following Kinsey as she investigates and gaining insight into her personal life--I found the flashback storyline too leisurely-paced for my liking.