4 Great Fictional Detectives

You’d think that one of crime fiction’s prevailing ideas — that chaos can be transformed into order — would mesh well with explorations of faith. Yet mystery novels that incorporate religion in a significant way aren’t all that common. Thankfully, the inspiring Patricia Raybon, a veteran nonfiction writer and novelist, has been threading the needle in just the right way with her Annalee Spain series, set in 1920s Denver.

In the third book, TRUTH BE TOLD (Tyndale House, 385 pp., $29.99), Annalee’s deep commitment to her church does not detract from her work as a private detective — in fact, the opposite is true, since she gets plenty of investigative leads from her community. She’s attending a garden party at the home of a wealthy Black philanthropist when a young woman turns up dead on the premises, one whom no one is keen to identify.

Annalee begins to investigate — not an easy or particularly safe thing for a young Black woman to do in a city controlled by the Ku Klux Klan. Aiding her are church friends; her pastor paramour, Jack Blake; and a young white orphan named Eddie, who “had flat-out saved her life during her ruthless first case.”

Annalee hasn’t been a detective long, but she’s smart and resourceful, and has figured out a lot about what drives someone to murder: “People kill people — or kill other people’s dreams, hopes and spirits, even kill their accomplishments — for fear of losing something themselves.”

She’s also funny. Finding herself trapped in a dangerous situation, she begins to pray, then worries that God will find her prayer lacking. “But she couldn’t ponder that now. Not at a moment like this. Instead she just wanted God to help. Good grief, Jesus. Please.”