This is the perfect time of year for a trip to the ancient heart of Wales and one of the UK’s most popular authors is the man to take us there as Simon McCleave sees out 2025 with his latest Snowdonia mystery – The Lake Bala Killings. That’s where our report begins, plus we’ve got more from Wales with Cathy Ace’s new cosy mystery and books set in Scandinavia, New York and California.
This is the last On the Radar column for 2025. We’ll see you again on New Year’s Day 2026. Happy Holidays!
The Bala Lake Killings by Simon McCleave
Simon McCleave‘s popular Snowdonia series continues with the arrival of The Bala Lake Killings. DI Ruth Hunter and DS Nick Evans are quickly on the case when a local MP is murdered by a far-right extremist gang in Snowdonia, North Wales. One of the killers, Raymond Clarke, agrees to give evidence if he and his family are taken into protective custody – so the Clarkes are moved to the remote wilds near Bala Lake. But a leak of the location means the Clarke family is found and kidnapped. Who could have spilled the beans? And can Ruth and Nick find the Clarkes before the kidnap gang exacts its retribution?
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The Case of the Devious Daughter by Cathy Ace
Let’s head to Anwen-by-Wye, also in Wales, where sleuths Annie Parker and Carol Hill find themselves working for a woman who seems perilously close to death’s door. Meanwhile the other members of the WISE Enquiries Agency are scattered around the country due to the impending arrival of a baby, Burns’ Night plans that go awry and even a proposal for a new healthy eating regime! As fans of this series know, this team can handle anything that’s thrown at it so let’s see how they fare this time when The Case of the Devious Daughter by Cathy Ace is published on 29 December.
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A Play to Kill by Alex Ahndoril
The team behind the Lars Kepler novels is back with a second book in The Key Mystery series. A Play to Kill by Alex Ahndoril arrives on 1 January 2026, and it finds private detective Julia Stark taking on an impossible case. Famed actress Bianca Salo is still grieving the sudden death of her fiancé in a hotel room in Helsinki three years ago. She was playing Lady Macbeth in Stockholm at the time, and the run was cancelled. Now Macbeth is to be staged once more, but Bianca maintains that her dead partner is haunting her, standing over her as she sleeps and even setting fire to the costume in her dressing room. As Julia tries to find a real-life stalker, things start to escalate… Can she solve this, before it’s too late?
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First Do No Harm by SJ Rozan
Lydia Chin and Bill Smith must unlock a hospital’s many secrets to save an innocent man in SJ Rozan‘s First Do No Harm, out for Kindle on 6 January 2026. Lydia’s brother, Dr Elliott Chin, is a highly regarded Chief of Emergency Medicine at River Valley Hospital, where the nurses are threatening to strike. When a member of the nurses’ negotiating committee is found murdered, a morgue assistant is arrested for the crime but vehemently protests his innocence. It’s up to Lydia and Bill to get to the truth, but it soon becomes clear that there is much more going on at River Valley than just looking after patients.
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The Water Lies by Amy Meyerson
A pregnant woman and a grieving mother join forces in Amy Meyerson’s The Water Lies, out for Kindle on 1 January. Heavily pregnant Tessa Irons is at her wit’s end when her toddler throws a tantrum at the local coffee shop, shouting “Gigi!” at a woman she has never seen before. The next day the woman’s body is pulled from the nearby canal in Venice Beach and Amy hears alarm bells. Meanwhile, Barb Geller refuses to believe that her daughter’s death was just a drunken accident and she heads to California in search of answers. A chance meeting puts Tessa and Barb together, and with no one else prepared to listen, they set out to discover what really happened.
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