Lynn Slaughter on Best Mysteries Featuring Mothers and Daughters

Author Lynn Slaughter lists eight of the best and most notable mystery novels that feature mother and daughters.

Few relationships are as emotionally intense and fraught as that between mothers and daughters. When combined with mystery and suspense, novels that explore mother-daughter relationships can provide an extra wallop of gut-wrenching emotion.

In my novel, Deadly Setup, the relationship between Samantha (Sam) and her mother plays a major role. Their relationship is particularly strained, especially after Sam gets accused of murdering her mother’s fiancé. Most devastating to Sam is her mother’s refusal to believe her when she insists she’s innocent.

Below are eight of the best and most notable mystery novels that feature mother and daughters:

Good as Gone by Amy Gentry (2016) 

After her thirteen-year-old daughter Julie is kidnapped from her own bedroom, Anna feels as though she’s lost both of her daughters. Ten-year-old Jane hid in a closet and witnessed the kidnapping. Ever since, the distance between Jane and her mom has grown.

And then, eight years later, a young woman appears on the family’s doorstep claiming to be Julie. As Anna seeks to reconnect with her daughter, she starts to see that Julie’s story doesn’t add up. Is this really her daughter, or some horrible hoax?

Killing Time by Brenna Ehrlich (2022)

Told in alternating mother and daughter voices, Killing Time tells the stories of two interwoven mysteries. Crime-obsessed Natalie Temple is reeling from the murder of her favorite teacher. She tries to keep her investigation a secret from her disapproving mother Helen whom she resents for being overly protective. But it turns out that Helen has secrets of her own dating back to her college days when she stumbled upon the truth about what happened to a missing student.

The Night Olivia Fell by Christina McDonald (2019)

Abi’s teenage daughter Olivia falls off a bridge and is declared brain-dead. The autopsy reveals that the teen is pregnant and must remain on life-support to keep her baby alive.

Olivia’s fall is ruled an accident, but Abi sees the bruises on her daughter’s wrists and is determined to find out what really happened. She’d always thought she knew everything about her daughter’s life, but it turns out that Olivia was keeping secrets, both from her mother and her friends.

She’s Not There by Joy Fielding (2016)

When Caroline’s husband convinces her to leave their two young daughters alone while the couple enjoys an anniversary dinner in the restaurant downstairs at a Mexican resort, they return to their room and discover their two-year-old daughter Samantha has vanished without a trace.

The family is never the same. Caroline is awash in anguish and grief. Michelle, Caroline’s older daughter, is convinced her mother wishes she’d been the one kidnapped, and Caroline’s marriage disintegrates.

Then, fifteen years later, Caroline gets a phone call from a young woman who says, “I think my real name is Samantha. I think I’m your daughter.” Is she or isn’t she Caroline’s long-lost daughter? And did someone close to Caroline kidnap her daughter?

A Place in the Country by Elizabeth Adler (2012)

Fifteen-year-old Issy resents her mother Caroline for leaving her well-to-do father in Singapore, but Caroline has had enough of his cheating. Struggling financially, the warring mother and daughter end up living in an English village where Caroline works as a chef.

And then news arrives that Issy’s father has committed suicide. But Caroline doesn’t believe he would have taken his own life and is further shocked when his daughter and mistress land on her doorstep.

Grace is Gone by Emily Elger (2020)

Meg Nichols is viewed as the perfect mother of her invalid daughter Grace in their Cornwall village. And when Meg is found bludgeoned to death in her bed and Grace is missing, village residents are sure the culprit is her abusive ex-husband Simon who’d tried to kidnap Grace once before.

But Jon, a journalist who’d interviewed Meg, Grace, and Simon, isn’t so sure. He teams up with Cara, Grace’s young friend and neighbor, to investigate and discovers that the truth about Meg Nichols and her relationship with her daughter is not what it seemed.

Where She Went by Kelly Simmons (2019)

When Maggie O’Farrell, a cop’s widow, discovers that her only daughter Emma, a freshman in college, has gone missing, she’s determined to find her. She’d always thought her daughter told her everything. So how is it that she discovers her daughter had gone “undercover” to work on a newspaper story about college students paying off their student loans by selling their services to sugar daddies?

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight (2013)

When her fifteen-year-old daughter Amelia gets suspended because of cheating, single parent Kate arrives to retrieve her daughter from her posh private school, only to discover that Amelia has plunged to her death from her school’s roof.

The police rule it a suicide, but when Kate receives anonymous texts telling her that Kate didn’t jump, she sets out to discover what really happened. She pores through her daughter’s texts and emails to reconstruct the final months and weeks of Amelia’s life to uncover the truth about her death.

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Lynn Slaughter is a writer of young adult novels including: Leisha’s Song, published by Fire and Ice, which received a bronze medal from the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards and was nominated for an Agatha for best MG/YA mystery novel; It Should Have Been You, a Silver Falchion finalist; and While I Danced, an Epic finalist. The ridiculously proud mother of two sons and grandmother of five, she lives in Louisville, Kentucky where she is at work on her next novel and serves as president of Derby Rotten Scoundrels, her local Sisters in Crime chapter.