Mystery Bestsellers for the Week Ending January 13, 2012

A list of the top 15 mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending January 13th, 2012 has been posted by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.

Last week's number one, Death Comes to Pemberley, a stand-alone novel by P. D. James, retains its spot at the top this week by a comfortable margin. In second position is a former number one, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, which after nearly dropping out of the top 10, has climbed strongly in recent weeks.

Two new titles debut.

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At number 11 is Believing the Lie, the 16th Inspector Thomas Lynley mystery by Elizabeth George.

Lynley is mystified when he's sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the wealthy and influential Bernard Fairclough. The death has been ruled an accidental drowning, and nothing on the surface indicates otherwise. But when Lynley enlists the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, the trio's digging soon reveals that the Fairclough clan is awash in secrets, lies, and motives.

Deborah's investigation of the prime suspect — Bernard's prodigal son Nicholas, a recovering drug addict — leads her to Nicholas's wife, a woman with whom she feels a kinship, a woman as fiercely protective as she is beautiful. Lynley and Simon delve for information from the rest of the family, including the victim's bitter ex-wife and the man he left her for, and Bernard himself. As the investigation escalates, the Fairclough family's veneer cracks, with deception and self-delusion threatening to destroy everyone from the Fairclough patriarch to Tim, the troubled son Ian left behind.

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At number 15 is the 3rd Wyatt Hunt thriller, The Hunter by John Lescroart.

Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family — until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number: "How did ur mother die?"

The answer is murder, and urged on by curiosity and the mysterious texter, Hunt takes on a case he never knew existed, one that has lain unsolved for decades.

Child Protective Services, who suspected but could never prove that Hunt was being neglected, is uninformed; his birth father, twice tried but never convicted of the murder, is in hiding; Evie, his mother's drug-addicted religious fanatic of a friend, is untraceable. And who is the texter, and how are they connected to Hunt?

Yet in the present, time is running out. The texter, who insists the killer is out there, refuses to be identified. The cat-and-mouse game leads Hunt across the country and eventually to places far more exotic — and far more dangerous. As the chase escalates, so does the threat, for the killer has a secret that can only be trusted to the grave.

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