6 Must-Read Novels That Blend Mystery and Fantasy Perfectly
There’s something deeply indulgent about murder mysteries in worlds where anything could happen–poisons beyond comprehension; magical, life-threatening letters; and trees erupting from bodies. As a fantasy writer who grew up stealing her mother’s whodunits and crime thrillers, reading books that successfully utilize magic and mystery feels like winning the lottery. Any good fantasy novel should give readers a foundational understanding of its magic system, but a fantasy novel that’s built around a mystery? The satisfaction when all the threads, mundane and magical, come together at the end is unparalleled. It takes a special author to create both a compelling whodunit and a world so internally consistent that magical answers don’t feel unearned. Authors that succeed in this take my breath away.
(In the non-murdery, awe-inspiring sense, that is.)
My latest novel That Devil, Ambition is less of a whodunit and more of a who’s-going-to-do-it book. A group of thirteen gifted students must figure out how to kill their (literal) devil of a professor without getting caught, and he’ll kill them if their murder attempts fail. It’s a bit of a reverse murder mystery: the victim will be their professor, the murder weapon is undetermined because he’s essentially immortal, and the killer could be any of them. The struggle of crafting an almost-mystery around a potential murder only made me appreciate the genre-blending books that do it so well.
So, if you love your mysteries with a fantastical flair or your fantasies with a mysterious murder, here are six books for you:
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Once upon a time, Linsey Miller studied biology in Arkansas. These days, she holds an MFA in fiction and can be found writing about science and magic anywhere there is coffee. She is the author of the Mask of Shadows duology, Belle Révolte, The Game, What We Devour, Prince of Song & Sea, and Prince of Thorns & Nightmares. She also has two short stories in anthologies coming in 2023 and 2024. Her debut Mask of Shadows received rave reviews, including being a Fall 2017 Indie Next Pick and on ALA’s Rainbow List for 2019. Her third young adult fantasy novel, What We Devour, was a 2022 Lambda Awards finalist.
First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor. If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven.
However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit. And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task. Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends–softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia–to help.
After all, that’s why he befriended them. As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records–and their tombstones–forever.
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