Many crime books focus on finding out who killed the victim. We spend the book rooting for the amateur sleuth (usually) finding clues, talking to suspects, and figuring out whodunnit.
But now we’re seeing more books that upend the genre. Instead of finding the murderer, the main character needs help dealing with a dead body. Sometimes the person is dead because of something they did, sometimes by accident or not so much; sometimes the person is dead but put in a place to implicate them.
Thankfully, our intrepid sleuths have friends and family who are there to save the day. Often, that means some hard work like digging holes, carrying dead weight, and getting into hijinks to protect the main character. Or sometimes they get in serious trouble.
So in honor of these “Help Me Hide the Body Books,” Murder & Mayhem has compiled a list of seven books to get your blood pumping.
The Best Way to Bury Your Husband: A Novel
Self-help groups provide people with spaces to improve themselves and the world around them. Sally’s self-help group has a similar aim: get rid of terrible husbands. Permanently.
Sally and three women come together to find out how to protect themselves and their children from their abusive spouses. Sometimes that may mean hiding the body or two With murder, comes friendship.
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Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone
The title kind of says it all. Ernest Cunningham does not beat around the bush; everyone including him has murdered people. Family helps family, sometimes. But it’s not a litany of his family’s crimes.
Instead, it focuses on the decision to host a family retreat at a ski resort…that gets snowed in. And then the bodies start to fall. Can Ernest get to the bottom of the murders before he too joins the corpses?
The second book in the Ernest Cunningham series Everyone on This Train is a Suspect came out last year and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is due later this year.
Dial A for Aunties
Yes, this is the book that inspired this list. Meddelin Chan didn’t want to go on this blind date that her mom had set up. She especially didn’t mean to kill her date when he got handsy. So what do you do?
You bring in the aunties. But the family is on the verge of a giant billionaire wedding on an island resort where the body is accidentally shipped. Now Meddy has to hide the corpse, take photos…and keep her feet on the ground when she runs into the man who broke her heart.
It’s the first of three in the Aunties series where book three The Good, the Bad and the Aunties came out in March 2024.
The Bandit Queens
Offing terrible husbands is definitely a popular theme in these books.
Except Geeta didn’t kill her husband. She doesn’t know what happened to him and that’s fine. People leave her alone. Until other women want Geeta to give them tips…or a hand in taking care of their husbands.
Will Geeta find a graceful way of getting out of this or will she have to bury the hatchet herself?
A Good Place to Hide a Body
No one wants to get an urgent call from their parents that they need to come over immediately. We joke that it’s probably something about dinner or wear to hang a painting but that fear that the worst has happened is always lurking underneath.
That’s what Penny feared when she got a call. But instead, it was a fear that she didn’t even know she had—her parents had killed someone and needed her help. Well, what else does one do?
This one is expected to be out on July 4, 2024.
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It: A Novel (The Finlay Donovan Series Book 1)
We’ve all had moments where our words are misconstrued. It can be a silly mix-up or embarrassing. But Finlay’s case is much more challenging. While talking to her agent about the suspense book that won’t write itself, a woman overhears Finlay and thinks that she is a hit woman.
Finlay doesn’t know what to do though the cash would solve her problems - annoying ex-husband who is breathing down her neck and firing their babysitter without asking, as well as being able to pay her bills and keep custody of her children.
But when the dead body shows up, Finlay finds an expected ally in crime. Will she manage to hide the body, keep the cops off her tail, and outwit the criminal underworld? There are four books and one novella in the series so far.
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A Beginner's Guide to Murder
Of the seven books, this is the most suspenseful and serious one. Four women are having tea in a cafe when a young woman comes in and hides in the bathroom.
When an older man comes into the cafe asking if a young woman had come in, all four women just lie. They realize something is up with this young woman and they are going to try to help her. Soon these acquaintances are now partners in crime to kill this horrible abusive man.
Told from shifting perspectives of the four women and the young woman, you get insight into their lives and the dark secrets they hold.
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