I went looking for a new-to-me mystery series that could hit a very specific sweet spot: cozy without being precious, thoughtful without tipping into pretension. I found it first in audiobook form, almost by accident, and I was hooked from the opening chapters. This series slid neatly into my ears and refused to let go.
In the Bleak Midwinter opens the Reverend Clare Fergusson / Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne series, and from page one it feels like stepping into a snow-globed village where everything looks quaint until you notice the blood on the ice. Millers Kill is small, wintry, tight-lipped, and brimming with secrets. Clare arrives as the new Episcopal priest—smart, guarded, quietly carrying her own scars—and Russ is the town’s steady, married police chief who knows every back road and every family history. The murder at the center of the book is strong, but the real hook is the slow, careful way these two circle each other: wary, respectful, emotionally literate, and painfully human. This is not a gimmick pairing. It is grounded, moral, and full of restraint, which somehow makes it even more compelling. 
A Fountain Filled with Blood deepens everything I loved about the first book. The mystery—rooted in school rivalries, old resentments, and the quiet hierarchies of a small town—unfolds with confidence, but the emotional stakes rise just as sharply. Clare is more settled but no less complicated. Russ remains bound by duty and marriage, and the ache between them becomes more visible, more fraught, and more honest. This series understands that longing is rarely glamorous. It is awkward, ethical, exhausting, and deeply human, and that realism is one of its quiet superpowers.
There is also something deeply comforting about the cultural shorthand Spencer-Fleming uses. References to PBS, public radio–adjacent sensibilities, and a certain late-20th-century, educated-Northeast worldview made me feel instantly at home. It is clear the author lives in or very near my cultural zeitgeist, and those small, knowing touches add a layer of authenticity that is easy to underestimate and hard to fake.
A special note for audiobook listeners: Suzanne Toren’s narration is wonderful. The voices feel lived-in rather than performed, the pacing gives emotional beats room to breathe, and the atmosphere of Millers Kill—snow, silence, tension—comes through beautifully. It is the kind of narration that makes long drives shorter and everyday chores suspiciously enjoyable.
Together, these first two novels promise a series that cares as much about souls as it does about bodies, as much about silence as about clues. Come for the murder. Stay for the moral complexity, the slow-burn tension, and the feeling that you are being trusted with real people, not just characters.
“Discharged from a hospital just means you’re not dead.” These words of Ralph B. Lilly, M.D., describe his early struggle to recover from a traumatic brain injury. Lilly was a forty-four-year-old practicing neurologist sitting on his motorcycle at a red light when a drunk driver rear-ended him in 1980. In the ICU, after regaining consciousness and being told what happened, he asked, “What’s a hospital? What’s a motorcycle?” This tragic experience transformed his life and his approach to his neurology practice: doctors treat those with brain injury; but loved ones heal them.
Diane F. Kramer
