5 Mysteries for Women Who Read Like Fiends

It's the rare mystery reader who doesn't secretly believe that she'd make a great detective. In Steven Rigolosi's new book, Felicity Prim is mugged in New York City, then decides it's time to move to the country and set up shop as a "criminal outsmarter." She quits her job and decides to put into practice the information she's absorbed via mystery novels by "helping the locals find missing jewelry, solving missing-persons cases and uncovering malfeasance in Town Hall." So she moves to Greenfield, Connecticut, a rural hamlet with plenty of residents who've fled the city. Greenfield is in need of her services, she reasons, since "there is always conflict when...down-at-heel, somewhat underprivileged natives encounter overprivileged yuppies." But when she finds a corpse in the basement of her new home, it's time to solve a murder. As light and sweet as the black and white cookies Miss Prim likes so much, this modern-day parody of the village-set cozy mystery will scratch the same itch as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books or the Phryne Fisher series—but with a wink.