Wheredunnit: 9 Mystery Novels with Killer Settings

With some mysteries, whodunnit is only part of the story. These nine fascinating books all feature environs that play a major role in keeping the suspense high and the puzzle maddening: “Wheredunnits?” Whatever you might call them, they’re sure to immerse you in locales beyond the ordinary as you try to crack the case.

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Erica Ferencik, Girl in Ice

Ferencik is known for her wild settings, but Girl in Ice freezes out the rest with an isolated Arctic backdrop, a scientific research station full of perplexing characters, and a thawed-out mystery girl who may or may not be of our time.

A travel-phobic expert linguist is sent up to the Greenland-adjacent wasteland to try and sort it all out, though not everyone, it seems, wants her to succeed. Bad guys and bad weather abound: I had to wrap myself in a blanket to finish this one.

L. Divine, An Epitaph for Jezebel

Like a little Georgia humidity and sweet tea with your crime solving? In Epitaph for Jezebel, a stripper-turned-reporter is forced back into the seamy Atlanta underworld when a dancer at her former club, The Honey Pot, winds up murdered. The book kicks off the Keke McCoy series with gritty realism, fascinating characters, and seriously suspenseful situations.

In addition to the great settings, my favorite part was Keke herself: There’s nothing our heroine hasn’t seen or can’t handle. From murky rooms to unexpected crime scenes and glaring city streets, I found the story to be an intoxicating, upside-down take on Southern charms.

Stuart Turton, The Last Murder at the End of the World

This bewildering mystery might be a distant relative of the TV show Lost: Picture a bunch of people trapped on an unidentified island, doing strange things for unspecified reasons, and waking up each morning to find their own bodies covered with dirt, bruises, and scratches. How did they get to the island? And why are they stuck there?

When one of the inhabitants is murdered, you’ll have to peel back the layers to try to discover the truth lurking at the island’s heart. (Trust me: Whatever you’re guessing, you’re wrong.) Unlike Lost, though, Turton’s book actually has a satisfying ending.

Jenna Blum, Murder Your Darlings

In the world of writers, to “kill your darlings” is to ruthlessly edit away all extraneous words. In this book, though, it just might mean something else entirely. No one is what they seem in Blum’s twisty tale that takes us from the historic Hawthorne Hotel in “Witch City” Salem to a wind-swept, privately owned, remote island in Maine, secluded writers’ workshop rooms, ritzy New York publishing houses, and several unexpected places in between.

The story jumps between three different characters’ perspectives, keeping the tension high as each one of them seems to believe they’re telling the truth.

What’s really going on, here? Who is the first-person narrator known only as “The Rabbit,” and why is she lurking around where she doesn’t belong? You’ll want to find out.

Gin Phillips, Ruby Falls

Quick: Ask me the last time I read a murder mystery set entirely underground in a 1930s-era waterfall cave. That would be March, when I got my hot little hands on Ruby Falls, a fictional tale that takes place in a real-life tourist attraction located 1,120 feet below the surface of Tennessee. The tunnel-rat characters include a newspaperman, a charlatan (or two), a ruggedly handsome caving guide, and a woman who desperately wants to break free of her society’s restrictive gender norms.

This one’s not for the claustrophobic. Or anyone who doesn’t want to stay up past their bedtime trying to unravel the subterranean enigma.

Hank Phillippi Ryan, All This Could Be Yours

The setting of All This Could Be Yours is notable for being no particular setting at all. Instead, our frazzled protagonist flits from city to city, airport to airport, and hotel room to hotel room while on book tour for her latest bestseller—all while being stalked by a mysterious, possibly murderous fan who seems to know her every move before she makes it.

This fun, fast, and puzzling read, which just won the 2026 Mary Higgins Clark Award and has been nominated for the Anthony Award, brings new meaning to the phrase “be careful what you wish for.”

Jo Firestone, Murder on Sex Island

You’re already sold, right? (I know I was, as soon as I saw the cover.) Despite the title, there’s more to this story than just entangled, nubile bodies and palm trees. Murder on Sex Island is a humorous mystery set behind-the-scenes at a reality TV show where contestants battle it out to see who will be crowned the sexiest sexpot of them all.

Our amateur sleuth is in disguise, posing as one of the hot-to-trot contestants in an effort to uncover buried (and probably sexy?) secrets. It’s a whole lot of bikini-clad fun.

Edwin Hill, Little Comfort

Like all of Hill’s mysteries, the first book in the Hester Thursby series spotlights the author’s droll delivery and knack for setting immersion. In Little Comfort, we follow Hester in and around Boston’s tony Beacon Hill, Somerville’s gritty (and gentrifying) Union Square, and New Hampshire’s unforgiving White Mountains in the depths of winter, all while Hester tries to track down a missing person and evade a serial killer.

Not bad for one little ol’ librarian. Oh, and there’s a dog: a basset hound mix named Waffles. Enough said.

L.M. Chilton, Everyone in the Group Chat Dies

I’m a sucker for anything set in Great Britain—particularly hardscrabble, quirky towns like Crowhurst, England, where this social-media sendup takes place. (I listened to the audio version, which features delightfully soothing, English-accented narration by Kimberley Capero.) The novel is set in the present day, the crime was thirty years ago, and much of the pivotal action takes place twelve months before the, uh…now.

So, yes: It’s a circuitous, fun ride! And yes, you’ll have to pay attention. But I’d argue that the same can be said for any great mystery, no matter where its killer happens to hang his—or her—hat.

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