Even if you can’t make it abroad this summer, these five mystery novels will whisk you away to far-flung locales — Tuscany, Iceland, England, the Seine — as you puzzle out who did it and why.

1. ‘Murder in Pitigliano’ by Camilla Trinchieri

Five of the best mysteries to read this summer

Nico Doyle, a retired New York homicide detective, moved to Tuscany to be near his late wife’s family. It’s a nice place to be, except he can’t seem to escape work. In this, the fifth installment in Trinchieri’s Tuscan Mysteries series, Doyle just can’t say no when 7-year-old Cilia Bianconi begs him to clear her father of a murder charge. But Doyle finds that the police have a good case against Cilia’s dad; to absolve him, he will have to dig deep into the unsavory secrets of one of the town’s most powerful families. (Soho Crime)

2. ‘A Murder for Miss Hortense’ by Mel Pennant

Pennant’s splendid debut mystery introduces readers to an unforgettable new sleuth, the indomitable Miss Hortense. As a young woman, Miss Hortense moved from Jamaica to Birmingham, England, and, with friends, created the Pardner, a communal organization giving financial and crime-solving help to the city’s Jamaican community. After one of the Pardner’s members was killed in an unsuccessful chase of a potential murderer, Miss Hortense was summarily dismissed from the organization. Now, it’s 40 years later, and it appears the same killer has returned to target Birmingham’s Jamaican community, forcing Miss Hortense to heal old wounds and finally crack the case. (Pantheon)

3. ‘Death on the Island’ by Eliza Reid

Reid, a Canadian and a former first lady of Iceland, uses her expert knowledge of Icelandic culture to create this gripping murder tale. Kavita Banerjee, deputy Canadian ambassador to Iceland, is fatally poisoned during a diplomatic dinner in Heimaey, an island off Iceland’s south coast. Banerjee’s husband, Rahul, contends that Banerjee’s boss, Canadian Ambassador Graeme Shearer, murdered her after the two had a nasty dispute. But Shearer’s wife, Jane, believes that her husband is innocent and sets out to find the real killer when a storm strands the diplomatic party on the island. (Poisoned Pen)

4. ‘Murder Takes a Vacation’ by Laura Lippman

Muriel Blossom, a retired widow and minor character in Lippman’s best-selling PI Tess Monaghan series, takes center stage as she splurges on a Seine cruise and suddenly finds herself the focus of a shadowy ring of international art thieves. After Blossom’s stateroom is ransacked and someone attempts to mug her, she discovers that the handsome lawyer who befriended her on the flight from Baltimore to Paris had secretly hidden a stolen, priceless artifact in her luggage. When he is killed, it becomes clear that the shipboard thieves will stop at nothing to retrieve the tiny artifact; Blossom must use the detective skills she learned from Monaghan to stop them or be their next victim. (William Morrow)

5. ‘The Red Queen’ by Martha Grimes

It’s a seemingly impossible murder. A patron sitting on a bar stool at the Queen pub in the village of Twickenham, England, is shot in the back, and no one in the crowded space saw the killer. So Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury is called in to figure out who had a motive to kill the victim — a local businessman named Tom Treadnor — plus the audacity and expertise to commit the crime. “The Red Queen” is the first new book since 2019 in Grimes’s long-running Richard Jury series, and fans will revel in this latest appearance of the detective and his eccentric and entertaining circle of colleagues and friends. (Atlantic Monthly)

Karen MacPherson is the former children’s and teen coordinator at the Takoma Park Maryland Library and a lifelong mystery fan.