Books like Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely

Christopher, a boy with Asperger’s syndrome, discovers that his neighbor’s dog has been murdered and sets out to solve the mystery with his unique analytical skills.

In 1917, war‑injured Captain Hastings arrives at his friend John Cavendish’s Essex manor, where the wealthy widow Emily Inglethorp is found dead by strychnine. Hercule Poirot is called to untangle a web of family intrigue and hidden motives.

A charming and clever women detective, Precious Ramotswe, solves mysteries in Botswana's small town of Midsomin, South Africa, from 1986 to 1997, facing dangers and love in the process. The novel is beloved by readers worldwide for its clever dialogue and characters who are as flawed as the rest of us. The book is a bestseller and has been translated into 45 languages, including Polish, German, and Japanese, among others. It was also voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

When train passengers overhear fresh‑prison inmates flirting, a teenage girl’s instinct is triggered—and a year later a mysterious disappearance turns into a chilling stalker threat.

At Donut Hearts, the donut shop owner, Suzanne Hart, enjoys the layer of snow covering the streets of April Springs, North Carolina, in time for the area's Winter Carnival. Her good feelings plummet when the ex-girlfriend of her ex-husband, Max, gets "iced".

Judge Knott's murder mystery in Beaufort, North Carolina, with a past lover as the suspect.

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950--and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story--of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school's tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder--but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse....An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions--and a rich literary delight.From the Hardcover edition.

Uncommon Clay follows Deborah Knott, a woman judge in North Carolina, as she delves into the pottery scene while navigating mystery and detective work.

A North Carolina judge investigates the arson of black churches.

Deborah Knott, a lawyer in North Carolina, tries to become a judge but becomes entangled in an old murder case and must solve the mystery to stay in the race for election.

In 1930s Boston, Blanche White, an observant black maid, becomes a private investigator when she takes a job with an aspiring state governor and finds herself tangled in a political murder case.

In Margaret Maron's atmospheric thriller 'Storm Track,' Judge Deborah Knott faces a chilling murder mystery amid an impending North Carolina hurricane, blending legal intrigue with atmospheric suspense.

A crime‑mystery novel where a private investigator in North Carolina tackles murders linked to a local coffee shop and doughnut shop, featuring the character Suzanne Hart.