The Naming of the Birds

A Best Mystery/Thriller of 2025 from NPR

The next installment of the “thrilling gothic mystery” (TIME) series, following the acclaimed bestseller The House on Vesper Sands, arrives in full force as Inspector Cutter and Sergeant Bliss solve their strangest and most personal case yet.

Something is troubling Inspector Henry Cutter. Sergeant Gideon Bliss is accustomed to his ill-tempered outbursts, but lately the inspector has grown silent and withdrawn.

Then, the murders begin. The first to die is the elderly Sir Aneurin Considine, a decorated but obscure civil servant who long ago retired to tend his orchids. If the motive for his killing is a mystery, the manner of his death is more bewildering still. The victims that follow suffer similar fates, their deaths gruesome but immaculately orchestrated. The murderer comes and goes like a ghost, leaving only carefully considered traces. As the hunt for this implacable adversary mounts, the inspector’s gloom deepens, and to Sergeant Bliss, his methods seem as mystifying as the crimes themselves.

Why is he digging through dusty archives while the murderer stalks further victims? And as hints of past wrongdoing emerge—and with them the faint promise of a motive—why does Cutter seem haunted by some long-ago failing of his own?

To find the answers, the meek and hapless sergeant must step out of the inspector’s shadow. Aided by Octavia Hillingdon, a steely and resourceful journalist, Bliss will uncover truths that test his deepest beliefs.

Hypnotic and twisty, Paraic O’Donnell’s The Naming of the Birds will ensnare you until the final pages and leave you questioning what matters most—solving a case or serving justice.