9 books like Dave Cubiak Door County Mysteries

Mindy Meija is another author I recently met at a conference. She is, appropriately enough, an accountant who lives in the Twin Cities and uses her expertise to craft thrillers that keep you on the edge and guessing what will come next.

Nora Trier is a forensic accountant, hired to check into missing prize money for a big kickboxing tournament. Expected to find both the thief and the cash, Unfortunately, Nora has a secret connection to the company sponsoring the tournament which made her reluctant to take the job until she came under pressure from her partner. 

Kirkus Reviews called Strike Me Down a tense and unpredictable thriller that “crackles with obsession, greed, lust, and plenty of ambition, and it’s loaded with more twists and turns than a spy novel.”

Another Great Lakes writer, Meredith Doench is an Ohio native who teaches in the English Department at the University of Dayton. Meredith, another member of my writing group, is the author of the Luce Hansen series, Whereabouts Unknown is a standalone introducing Office Theodora Madsen of the Dayton P.D.

Theo is investigating the case of two missing teenage girls, who vanish, each leaving behind a bloody handprint. When Theo is injured and faces a lengthy recovery, the case goes cold while Theo tries to piece together the connection between the two girls before time runs out.

Geoff Herbach is the award-winning author of YA books. His latest, Cracking the Bell, deals with a major issue in contact sports—concussion. After several years of online writing with him, we met in person at a big mystery convention. A college professor in Minnesota, Land of a Thousand Lakes, he has produced radio comedy shows and toured rock clubs telling weird stories. 

When the main character, Isaiah, is knocked out on the field, the consequences reach far beyond his ability to play, forcing him to think about life with football. He has to consider tough decisions that will have an impact on his family, his team, and his future. How do you decide your path to the future when none of your choices are good?

Best Kept Secrets by Great Lakes author Tracey Phillips is a psychological mystery set in and around Indianapolis, Indiana. When I met Tracey at the Writers’ Police Academy in Appleton, Wisconsin, we ended hung out together and became fast friends. We bought each other’s books. And became fans.

Morgan Jewell is a homicide cop with a dark secret. Her best friend, Fay, was murdered years ago and Morgan, who can barely remember what happened that night, worries that she was somehow to blame. Now, as other bodies start surfacing, Morgan and her partner try to piece together the puzzle that might lead to catching a serial killer and resolve the mystery of Fay’s death. The twists and turns and the breakneck pace meant I could hardly put it down.

At my daughters’ elementary school, sign language was part of the curriculum both for hearing and deaf students, so I was intrigued to see how A. F. Whitehouse used her knowledge and experience as a former sign language interpreter in Signs of Murder.

The book, the first in an intriguing new series, features Dana Demeter, a Chicago homicide detective who grew up hearing in an all-deaf family.

Demeter struggles with her grief over a miscarriage, her anxiety over the future of her marriage, her concerns for her aging parents, and a penchant to drown her sorrows in alcohol even as she searches for the person who killed her father’s deaf friend.

A solid and satisfying read, with a twisting trail of clues into a puzzling mystery and profound insight into the world of the deaf. 

I’ve never been able to resist the allure of a mystery with the fast, hard-driving pace of a Chandler-style noir story, the kind that Matt Coyle serves up in Yesterday’s Echo, the first in his Rick Cahill series.

Cahill is the perfect old-style protagonist: tough, honest, noble, and haunted by the past. An ex-cop and one-time suspect in his wife’s murder, he’s spent eight years building a new life when a beautiful woman tempts him with love.

After she’s arrested for murder, Cahill is drawn into a vicious web that again paints him as a potential killer and pulls him back into the blurred limelight of his wife’s death.

The story is superbly crafted and opens the door to an award-winning series. Not to be missed.   

My late husband was a child immigrant, and for many years I listened as he and his family shared their experiences of balancing the opportunities this country offered with the deep and abiding loss they felt for the world they left behind.

Perhaps that’s why The Streel struck such a deep chord. It’s a mystery –and the first book in an enticing new series – but it’s also the story of young Bridget Reardon, an Irish immigrant who gives up all she holds dear to build a new life for herself in the tumultuous America of the 1880s.

I empathized with Bridget as she ached for the past, cheered her on as she outsmarted a clever killer, and look forward to her continuing saga in Mary Logue’s next volume, The Big Sugar.  

Lark Chadwick is my kind of protagonist – gutsy, smart, and burdened with a past that won’t let go.

When the aunt who raised her dies, Chadwick refuses to believe that suicide was the cause. Digging into the circumstances surrounding one death she discovers the truth about the deaths of her parents who were killed in an accident that only she survived.

A fledgling journalist, Chadwick talks herself into a job with the local paper, a first step in the many adventures that follow her in an exciting series that takes her all the way to the White House. Author John DeDakis, a former veteran CNN journalist, infuses the award-winning series with real-life drama and authenticity.

This book takes place in the windy city of Chicago and Clark is adept at making you feel like you are right there in the midst of the fast-paced, gritty city as you read.

The plotting helps by kicking off with a bang – a priest and a gang member found dead in church. Questions abound. But what really kept me turning the pages of this book (or technically swiping since I read it on my Kindle) was Cass Raines, retired cop turned PI.

Her last case on the police force left her reeling and she struggling to deal with the aftermath.

It’s Cass that makes this book stand out amongst other PI novels, you care about what she’s going through, about this new trauma that has been introduced into her life, and that through it all she’s still working to get justice for people that are often overlooked and… show more.