LJ asked Kellye Garrett, author of Like a Sister (Mulholland, Mar.) and the acclaimed “Detective by Day” mysteries, to discuss new developments in the crime fiction genre. The “Detective by Day” opener Hollywood Homicide won the Anthony, Agatha, Lefty, and IPPY for best first novel. It’s also one of BookBub’s “Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.” The second, Hollywood Ending, was featured on the TODAY show’s Best Summer Reads of 2019 and was nominated for both Anthony and Lefty awards. Garrett serves on Sisters in Crime’s national board and is a cofounder of Crime Writers of Color. Learn more at KellyeGarrett.com.

Please tell us about trends you see in mystery publishing. Do you see any that you think have staying power?

I consider myself to be a reader first and foremost. It’s a great time to be a mystery lover. Two trends I’m loving are suspense novels set at remote locations and edgier cozies, which are lighter-weight amateur detective novels that don’t necessarily fit the tropes we’ve seen so much over the past decade. Today’s cozies don’t have to be set in small towns with the main character having a set trade. Even books that still have those elements are expanding with millennial and Gen Z protagonists and diversity in everything from their jobs to their ethnicity. The [movement] I’m hoping has staying power—meaning it becomes status quo—is more diversity in crime fiction, period. Today, readers can devour cozies from [authors] like Mia P. Manansala, historical mysteries from people like Naomi Hirahara, and domestic suspense from people like Rachel Howzell Hall. I’m excited but also hesitant because we’ve been here before, in the 1990s, when there were all these amazing mystery series written by Black authors, only for most of them not to be publishing those series a decade later. That can’t happen again.

You’re an author of cozies and of other kinds of mysteries. Can you tell us what it’s like getting publishers and readers to make the switch with you?

It’s been fun but also scary. I’m not the first nor the last person to jump from series to stand-alones. I definitely want to follow in the footsteps of people like Laura Lippman and Jess Lourey. Stand-alones are certainly big right now (another trend!) so it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be when my agent, Michelle Richter, was trying to sell the book to publishers. One thing I’ve noticed is a lot of readers assume that Like a Sister is either part of my existing series or a new series, so I’m definitely seen as a series author still. Hopefully that will change once the book is out, because this is a different genre and tone.

My “Detective by Day” books are meant to be silly, fun books that take place in a heightened reality. Though Like a Sister still has a lot of humor, it’s a more serious, character-driven story about a Black woman in New York City trying to figure out why her estranged sister was found dead of an overdose in the Bronx. The cops want to dismiss it as an overdose, but my main character, Lena, knows something more happened.

I really hope readers who loved the characters in my “Day” books won’t be disappointed with Like a Sister since it doesn’t have the same tone. Hopefully, they’re willing to make that jump with me to this new genre, world, and characters, because it has a lot of the things I loved about the “Day” books: a strong, but flawed, Black woman at its center; a great cast of characters; and just a very fun, often sarcastic first-person narrative.

What do you wish to see in the future?

I want more queer crime fiction. Much like crime writers of color, queer crime writers are out here and they’re putting out amazing books. Authors like John Copenhaver, Cheryl A. Head, Greg Herren, Marco Carocari, Dharma Kelleher, and Kristen Lepionka. But I want to see more of those books being bought and promoted by the major publishers. P.J. Vernon’s Bath Haus definitely broke down some doors in 2021 with its massive, well-deserved success, and I hope that will encourage more big publishers to gobble up mysteries and suspense by LGBTQ+ authors writing their own stories.

Which upcoming crime fiction books by other authors are you excited about?

2022 did not come to play when it comes to crime fiction. Just this month, I can’t wait for Eli Cranor’s Don’t Know Tough (a Southern noir that’s been compared to Friday Night Lights), Alex Segura’s Secret Identity (a mystery about a Cuban American woman trying to break into the comic book industry in the 1970s that combines Segura’s extensive background in both crime fiction and comic books), and Gigi Pandian’s Under Lock and Skeleton Key (an edgier cozy, about a disgraced third-generation magician trying to solve a locked-room mystery to keep her family’s business afloat). This summer I can’t wait for Amina Akhtar’s Kismet, about a Desi woman who brilliantly skewers the fake wellness industry and Kelly J. Ford’s Bad as All That, a queer suspense [novel] about a woman who must confront the abuse in her past when she comes home to Arkansas. And that’s just a handful of the books I can’t wait to read. My TBR list is already toppling over.

Henrietta Verma is cofounder and coauthor of First Clue, a free weekly newsletter that reviews mysteries and thrillers as far in advance of publication as possible. Verma, formerly LJ’s Reviews Editor, is a librarian and the author of How To Get Your Book into Libraries and Reviews Are In. 

The Case Continues:

The Crime Fiction Preview 

A Cozy Quiz

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