Never Mind Whodunit: Read These Whydunit and Howdunit Mysteries
Mystery novels are synonymous with “whodunit” stories: we know the crime, and we want to know the culprit. Usually, our intrepid detective is trying to sleuth out a murderer. But that’s not the only way to structure a mystery. Some are more like a Clue game, where you might not even know who the victim is at first, never mind the weapon or the perpetrator. Other mystery/thriller books open with a murder scene, often with an unexpected killer, and we backtrack to find out what led them to that point. There are also plenty of locked room mysteries and puzzle mysteries where the murder seems impossible and most of the investigation involves figuring out how the murder could have happened at all. (Spoiler alert: they used an icicle as the murder weapon!)
For task #23 of the 2024 Read Harder Challenge, “Read a ‘howdunit’ or ‘whydunit’ mystery,” we’re shining a spotlight on these other ways of telling a mystery. I’ve included mostly whydunit mysteries here, because howdunits are a little more common and easy to find: just search for locked room mysteries and you’ll get plenty more recommendations. I also want to give you permission to stretch the definition of “mystery” for this one: some might be closer to thrillers or even literary fiction, but the whydunit or howdunit focus keeps them within the bounds of this task.
I have to thank our resident mystery expert, Jamie Canavés, for many of these picks. You can get more mystery recommendations from her by signing up for the Unusual Suspects newsletter. Now, onto the whydunits and howdunits!
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, translated by Alexander O. Smith
When looking up whydunits and howdunits, the author’s name that pops up over and over again is Keigo Higashino. Jamie recommends Silent Parade, book four in the Detective Galileo series, as a story that combines elements of whydunit, howdunit, and whodunit, but you can also start with book one. The Devotion of Suspect X begins with Yasuko killing her abusive ex-husband and her neighbor helping her to cover it up. Then we meet Detective Kusanagi, who suspects Yasuko, but is having trouble finding a hole in her alibi. This is a perfect example of a howdunit mystery.
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor
If reading about violence against children is a dealbreaker for you, skip this one. The opening line is “The baby is dead.” Readers know within the first two pages that the nanny has killed the two children she was looking after. But why? We backtrack to see how a wealthy Parisian couple hired the “perfect nanny” for their two children, and how the relationship between employers and employee grew jealous, resentful, and tense before it erupted into violence. An HBO series adaptation starring Nicole Kidman is in the works now.
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Under Lock & Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian
Tempest Raj has returned to her childhood home to lick her wounds after a career setback. Working for her family’s business, Secret Staircase Construction, seems inevitable. At her father’s construction site, though, Tempest’s stage double is found dead inside a wall. Even stranger, this wall seems to have been sealed for over a century. Tempest worries that she is the intended target, so she has to solve this mystery before she ends up the next victim.
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
This is a literary novel with a whydunit at its heart. Set in 1969 Brooklyn, it begins with the church deacon shooting the project’s drug dealer in broad daylight, in front of many eyewitnesses. Discovering the reason why means digging into the relationships and secrets of this community, from the African American and Latinx residents to the white neighbors to Italian mobsters and the members of the deacon’s Baptist church. Despite the murder, reviews call this “improbably hilarious” and a “humanity-embracing novel.”
When I Am Through with You by Stephanie Kuehn
Ben is in jail, serving time for murdering his girlfriend, Rose, during a school camping trip. And he’s not sorry about it. In When I Am Through With You, he tells the story of what happened on that trip and why he did what he did. Ben leads a camping trip into the mountains for the orienteering club, but things quickly go wrong, and it’s increasingly unclear what the morally right thing to do is. This is part psychological thriller, part survival story, with a dash of Lord of the Flies thrown in.
The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong, translated by Chi-Young Kim
When 26-year-old Yu-jin wakes up and finds his mother’s murdered body in their duplex, all he can remember from the night before is her calling his name. His seizures affect his memory, but all signs point to him as the killer. Over three days, he frantically puts together the events that led up to her death, and readers get deeper into the mind of a man on the edge. Psychological thriller fans will love this.
The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu
Remy and Elise used to be best friends—soulmates, even. Elise was the master of pranks and calculated revenge. But now, Remy’s boyfriend Jack is dead, and Elise pulled the trigger. Remy is left reconsidering everything she thought she knew about Elise and their relationship, searching through all of their memories together to find something to exonerate Elise…or something to prove that she never really knew Elise at all.
A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson, translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles
Eighteen-year-old Stella is standing trial for the murder of a local businessman. Her parents can’t understand how she could even have met this man 15 years older than her, never mind how she could have killed him. As they dig deeper into the events to try to build a defense for her, they begin to question how much they can trust Stella. This is a howdunit and whydunit story that asks, “How well do you know your own children? How far would you go to protect them?”
Still looking for more? Check out these howdunit mystery recommendations!
10 of the Best Puzzle Mysteries
What book do you recommend for this task? Let’s chat in the comments!
Check out all the previous 2024 Read Harder posts here.
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