If you want to add some spice to your mysteries and thrillers, there’s nothing quite like an undercover operation. Someone, usually the sleuth, finds themselves taking on a new persona or enhancing part of their biography to infiltrate an organization, a family, a community for various pieces.
Sometimes it’s to keep themselves safe from violence or prison. Sometimes it's to find information or solve a crime.
Whatever the reason, undercover work amps up the suspense.
Can the character keep their true identity hidden? Will they be found out and survive? And will they uncover the information that they need?
There’s only one way to find out. You’ll just have to read the book.
Here are six recently published mysteries and thrillers where going undercover may mean life or death—or revenge.
Murder at Gulls Nest
It’s 1954, and Sister Nora Breen has asked to leave the order to investigate the possible disappearance of a former novice, Freida, who had promised to write.
When the letters cease coming, Nora decides to head to the small town named Gore-on-Sea where Freida was located. She goes undercover at the Gull’s Nest where Freida had been staying.
Instead of finding Freida, Nora learns that there have been several murders at the inn. Thinking that there might be a connection, Nora has to unearth some old secrets that someone wants to stop from seeing the light.
It’s likely the first of a new series featuring Nora Breen.
My Father's House
This book and its recently published sequel, The Ghosts of Rome, are literary thrillers about the Rome Escape Line.
The Choir, a clandestine organization headed by Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, works to help POW, refugees, and other wanted individuals out of Nazi-occupied Rome. It’s a game of mouse and cat as Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann tries to ferret out their activities and capture the Monsignor.
Both books involve significant undercover operations, as members of the Choir and its clients bob and weave against the dangers. It’s an important story about doing the necessary thing in spite of the risk and sacrifice.
The Case of the Christie Conspiracy
Eliza Baker doesn’t even read mysteries, but when she finds a job as assistant to Dorothy Sayers for the Detection Club, she takes the job.
She’s mostly there to take notes and prepare events, but she’s been asked to report on any suspicious activities of the Club’s members. Someone is spilling secrets.
Things get hairy when one of the club members dies in the middle of an initiation ceremony. The prime suspect is the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie, who had a beef with the victim—and disappeared after the murder.
Eliza now has a third job: find out who killed the victim, no matter what.
There are two books in the Detective Club series.
Also, if you want more undercover work, check out Oliver’s nine-book series, the Fiona Figg & Kitty Lane Mysteries.
Mrs Spy
Being a mother is hard enough, but add in being a secret agent and everything gets even harder.
In 1965, Maggie Flynn is trying to balance being a MI5 spy and mother to a teenager. She’s good at her job, great with disguises and surreptitiously taking photos.
Sure, her daughter is going through a phase and her mother is a handful. But things that she thought were certain are suddenly uprooted when she learns that her late husband, Davy, may also have been a spy.
On top of that, someone may have betrayed him…at MI5.
Now she’s got to find out who her husband really is and find justice for his death, without revealing herself to her mother and daughter.
The Dark Maestro
How do you walk away from a successful musical career? Sometimes you don't have a choice.
That’s Curtis Wilson’s sad lot in life. He may have been a virtuoso cellist, but his father, Zippy, has gotten himself in trouble with a drug kingpin, and Curtis, Zippy, and his stepmother Larissa all have to go into witness protection.
That means leaving the classical music life behind, which is hard even in the easiest of circumstances!
As they try to live their new lives, they start creating an animated superhero video on YouTube called “Dark Maestro.” But it’s getting clear that the FBI isn’t going to get them back to their old lives any time soon.
So maybe the three of them need to start thinking to take their future into their own hands.
The Cleaner
Esmie is very good at her job. She’s an effective and quiet cleaner for wealthy families in the gated community of The Woodlands in Ireland.
They trust her to do her job; even better, they leave her alone.
But little do they know that her arrival is not happenstance. She’s there to seek revenge.
As she cleans their kitchens and bathrooms, she’s collecting secrets, one by one.
It’s a story behind the beautiful facade of multi-euro homes and seemingly perfect lives where darkness and deceit lie.
Featured image: Mona Eendra/Unsplash
