Mystery Recommendations last updated Jan 12, 2020.
Books | |
1 | Dave Robichaux by James Lee Burke. |
2 | Charlie Parker by John Connolly. |
3 | Any of the Arkady Renko novels by Martin Cruz Smith, but I especially like Gorky Park, Havana Bay, and Polar Star. |
4 | I like Elmore Leonard. The women are smart, his good guys are never all that good, his bad guys are never all that bad, and sometimes they trade places entirely. His dialogue is always snappy , no superfluousness to it at all. Don’t neglect his early westerns, his style while still developing was already apparent. |
5 | The Bosch TV series on Amazon Prime is terrific. Starring the excellent Titus Welliver. |
6 | My local PBS station has a cable channel that mostly does international police procedurals when it isn’t doing international news feeds Wallander is my second favorite. They apparently love him too, because there are several series with different actors doing the same books. I prefer Martin Beck. Also that German guy whose partner is a german shepherd. Not RinTinTin, but those dogs can act. (Inspector Rex) |
7 | I’ll note that the original Martin Beck ‘Swedish’ mysteries by Wahloo and Sjowall have all been republished and are (obviously) worth reading. |
8 | Would also recommend Bearskin, by James A. McLaughlin. Came out last year. First novel. Kind of an eco-detective thriller. |
9 | Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger books, particularly the early ones – Black Light has one of the best twist endings I have ever read, plus fascinating characters. Point of Impact also excellent. The later books got somewhat repetitive, unfortunately. |
10 | I really like Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series, set in Belfast during the troubles. |
11 | The Myron Bolitar series by Harlen Coben is really good. He’s a sports agent crime solver (think of it as a cozy mystery aimed at guys). He’s funny and has the whole “laugh in the face of danger” noir vibe. |
12 | I favor the two Roman detectives of Lindsey Davis (the first 20 books about Marcus Didius Falco, and the next eight about his daughter Flavia Albia). Her research into Roman life is excellent, and her people (heros, villains, and even throwaways) feel real, in the sense that they’re not cardboard pieces being pushed around a board to make the author’s point (or plot) work, but that their actions and motivations are human, |
13 | If you like Michael Connelly and have not read any thing other then the Bosch series try the Poet. That’s the first of three novels, the third due out in June. I also recommend John Carlos Blake. Not strictly detective novels, but well written and researched. He writes about gunslingers, mobsters and other n’er do wells. His best stuff is about the Wolfes, a family of gun runners on the Texas/Mexico border. |
14 | Robert Crais and his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series generally. But he also wrote a standalone called “Suspect”, which is the best detective story ever written from a dog’s point of view featuring LA police officer Scott James and his police dog Maggie. Maggie and Scott join Cole and Pike in a second book, “The Promise”. Maggie stars. |
15 | Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series. Another Irish mystery writer offering a deeply flawed detective. |
16 | Also, for classic American, you can’t beat ‘Red Harvest’ by Dashiell Hammett. The (nameless) Continental Op, the novel’s detective/protagonist, is not as famous as other Hammett characters, but ‘way crazier and ‘way greater, IMO. |
17 | Some of my favorite mystery writers are Charlotte Armstrong, Dorothy Sayers, and Josephine Tey, because I enjoy the character portrayals (both protagonists and walk-ons). FYI: Sayers has some moments of “of her time” bigotry that appall me. |
18 | Barbara Michaels (who also wrote as Elizabeth Peters), wrote Smoke and Mirrors, set in the campaign headquarters of a woman running for the US Senate. It was published in 1989, when there were only 2 women in the US Senate: Kassebaum (R) and Mikulski (D). |
19 | I second any recommendation for Dashiell Hammett & Raymond Chandler, but I also enjoy Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books. Classic mysteries full of detail of exactly what it was like to live in NYC in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s…. |
20 | Denise Mina has three separate Glasgow based mysteries, all with female protagonists, one a journalist, one a detective and the first the girlfriend of the main victim. I loved all of them, but loved her most recent book less. |
21 | Although a bit dated, John Harvey’s Charlie Resnick series is one of my favorites. Also liked Wallander a lot, as well as a few other Nordic crime series. |
22 | I’m partial to Louise Penney’s “Inspector Gamache” series and Elizabeth George’s “Inspector Lynley” series! |
23 | love the Marlowe books, especially the first and last ones. Don’t like some of the racially charged language, although he definitely seems to have evolved over time. |
24 | John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway books —the Bookman ones, have a real burn to them. |
25 | Elmore Leonard is probably my favorite in crime novel genre. The Switch is a real hoot! I’ve always felt these sorts of books gave me a real sense of place, as well. Elmore L. Detroit and Florida, Sara Paretsky Chicago, JL Burke Louisiana, Marcia Muller San Francisco, the list goes on. Also Carl Hiassen (sp?) in Florida – Double Whammy about competitive bass fishing is my favorite of his, with Skintight (about a rogue plastic surgeon, with a Geraldo Rivera character named Reynaldo Fleming) as a close second. |
26 | Ann Cleeves. Her Vera series and Shetland series were both made into tv series. I liked the tv shows a lot but the books are even better. |
27 | Rex Stout is fun. We just started reading a Perry Mason, The Case of the Restless Redhead, and we’re enjoying the ’50s atmosphere. Lots of landline phone action. |
28 | Have you tried Patricia Moyes? I love her Henry Tibbett mysteries and his wife is a major character and the two of them are delightful. Murder Fantastical is probably the funniest mystery I’ve ever read. |
29 | Jack Vance wrote some SF detective stories (Magnus Ridolph, Miro Hetzel) that were pretty good. SF, you say, but he did win an Edgar in his earlier period. |
30 | I like Adrian McKinty’s Belfast series – those are great and probably something other B-J readers would like, even if they don’t like morose detectives. I also like Denise Mina. I’ve read Hammett and Chandler. I’m going to check out Martin Beck and some of the other recommendations. |
31 | Our favorite books (I read out loud to my husband while he cooks) are Colin Dexter’s Morse series. But we’ve read them all! It might be time to start again. |
32 | Go old school and read John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee books! |
33 | Travis McGee was my favorite when I was a kid. Living in a houseboat in Florida making money finding things for people sounded pretty good when I was 16. |
34 | Ross MacDonald was another detective series writer I read in the day. |
35 | Check out Sixty-Four by Hideo Yokoyama. The protagonist’s daughter has run away from home and it hangs over everything. It was a lot of fun. |
36 | I also like the novels by Keigo Higashino, although his protagonists aren’t particularly flawed. Some of his books, like Malice and Under the Midnight Sun don’t really have protagonists, which is an interesting ride as well. |
37 | My husband likes the new Dean Koonce series that features a female detective. Not sure of the name though.ETA The detective is Jane Hawk. |
38 | I like historicals, so the Falco novels, yeah. Then, brother Cadfael. It’s a good portrayal of a good but not innocent man living through a turbulent time in British history. The sister Fidelma novels for a time when women held real power in Ireland, before they abandoned Celtic Christianity for Roman and buggered it up to hell and gone. The Monk novels for Victorian England, with a marvelous character at the center. And my beloved Miss Silver for all things mid-twentieth century England. |
39 | I went through the whole thread to see if someone had recommended John D MacDonald’s Travis McGee series! I’ve read them all and still own quite a few. Plus a lot of his non-McGee stand alone mysteries. He was a master at the genre. |
40 | I just read Chandler’s the Little Sister; I recommend it. Also, the Erast Fandorin series by Boris Akunin (takes place in 1800s Russia) and A Gentleman’s Murder by Christopher Huang are really good. |
41 | Just started my first Brother Cadfael mystery. Will let you know if I like it and then feel compelled to devour the series. Do you recommend reading them in order? |
42 | JanWillem van de Wetering wrote a series about two police detectives, Grijpstra and de Gier who work murders in Amsterdam, and their boss, identified only as “the Commissaris”. vdW had studied Zen Buddhism in Japan (and wrote a couple of books about that), and the relationship between the detectives and the Commissaris seems to have some similar harmonics. Dated a bit (they’re from the 60s and 70s, I think) but I’ve returned to them several times. |
43 | Dr. Siri Paiboon by Colin Cotterill |
44 | Adrian McKinty Northern Ireland books (not The Chain!) |
45 | Any/all Walter Mosely series |
46 | Helen Tursten’s inspector Irene Huss series esp. An Elderly Lady is up to No Good. |
47 | Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series |
48 | And if not already mentioned, the Tana French books are very good, but I thought her most recent was full of cardboard characters in service of a larger theme she was trying to explore. It didn’t appeal to me and I skimmed the last 200 pages because I had already figured out the mystery. Some LOVE these, other really DO NOT LIKE. |
49 | Nobody’s mentioned Val McDermid’s “Tony Hill” books yet? Or that they were the source for an awesome tv series, Wire In the Blood? If you like messed-up protagonists, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan are right up there. |
50 | Since no one’s mentioned him, check out Chester Himes’ novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. My favorite is Real Cool Killers. I dare you to read just the opening scene and not marvel at Himes’ ability write an action scene and to capture the Harlem of a certain era. |
51 | “Red Herring”, about a private detective – a former member of the Communist Party, veteran of the Spanish Civil War and WW2 – in New Zealand in 1951. You think Poisonville was corrupt?! |
52 | Three I’ve liked: Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series, set in Venice; Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series, set in Sicily; and Charles Williford’s Hoke Mosely series, set in Miami. Back in the ’80’s, I saw a bumpersticker that said ‘Come back to Miami–we weren’t shooting at you!’ This sentiment that would have been right at home in Williford’s writing. |
53 | I’m about 2/3rds through The Dogs of Riga. Had no idea Mankell hated writing that series. Only other authors mentioned that I have read are one by Louise Penny that my parents left behind when they visited once, and Dashiell Hammett. Got lots of reading to do I guess. |
54 | I read all of the Aurelio Zen books, and they are part Italian travelogue, but more than that, they are deeply engaging and very dark portrayals of modern Italy. Author is Michael Dibdin, who taught in Perugia for years before moving to the US and writing the novels. I would love to have known his view of the Amanda Knox saga. He died around 10 years ago. |
55 | OK, hyperbole time. The single greatest detective trilogy: Jean-Claude Izzo, The Marseilles Trilogy. I’ve never read anything as good about detection, racism, food, fishing, and an old city. Just superb. All the superlatives. |
56 | Ruth Rendell is the master at plotting. I always give mysteries what I call the “Rendell test” — does it make sense when you work backwards if you read the earlier passages knowing what you know at the end? Very few mysteries pass that test. Hers almost always do. |
57 | Megan Abbott. Not PI. Female noir. Early books are basically classic period noir told from the POV of the women. More recent are noir about teen girls/young women and how friendship and its secrets can become toxic. She was co-showrunner on the TV adaptation of her novel Dare Me is currently on USA (a Netflix co-production, so it will be there as well at some point). |
58 | Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt books: PI. Amazingly original. DeWitt is a follower of Jacques Silette, the world’s greatest detective, whose arcane methods are known only to a small few. They do not follow clues in the traditional sense, merely observing what arrives before them and finding the patterns within, thus solving the crime. Even though you know Silette is Gran’s creation as well, I kept finding myself wanting to jump on the internet to search for more. The esoteric mystery system within the novels, as well as the overpowering memories and PTSD of post-Katrina New Orleans (which Gran lived through) really sets these apart. |
59 | And Denise Mina. She was working on a PhD dissertation on mentally ill people who survive outside the psychiatric system. If this interests you, read her books. |
60 | Donald Hamilton. Sure he wrote the Matt Helm series, but before that he wrote half a dozen mysteries. Also westerns. |
61 | Assignment Murder (aka Assassins Have Starry Eyes; The Steel Mirror; Night Walker; Line of Fire. Heroes tossed into situations out of their depth, gutsy women, interesting plots. |
62 | Night Walker is available from Hard Case Crime. Don’t know about the others. |
63 | Eric Ambler writes good thrillers. They aren’t really mysteries, I guess. |
64 | Kate Atkinson is great, though the last one was overstuffed, IMHO. Plots revolving around human trafficking seem to have become trendy. Ugh. Atkinson’s first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum is how I found her, and it remains one of my favorite modern novels. Deeply affecting. |
65 | Nobody mentioned the Donald Lam / Bertha Cool detective stories, also by Earle Stanley Gardner? I read them in high school, no idea if they’ve stood the test of time. |
66 | Thomas Perry – best known for his Jane Whitefield series (set in modern times, Jane is a Native American woman who “guides” people in desperate trouble out of danger and into new lives) and Butcher’s Boy (a Mafia hit man written without apology but surprisingly sympathetic – maybe not so surprisingly, as the Mafia has turned on him and the books mostly have him battling people even worse than he is). Perry’s one-offs are also terrific. He does an interesting thing where the character “types” who are the heroes or anti-heroes in one book are the antagonists in another – particularly true of professional hitpersons. |
67 | Laurie King – Mostly known for her Mary Russell books (Mary being an orphan who Sherlock Holmes marries after his retirement) but she also wrote the Kate Martinelli series of books, set in modern California and centered around a lesbian SFPD detective. I like the Martinelli books more than the Russell, since Russell is perilously close to a Mary Sue, but they’re all complex and well-written. |
68 | Donna Leon – Over 30 books centered around Commissario Guido Brunetti, a detective in Venice. The books are an excellent window into daily Venetian life, the challenges of working for and in a deeply corrupt system, and – especially over the last few – an increasingly melancholy look at how Venice is dying as a real city with real people in favor of existence as a tourist attraction. Leon herself has, I think, recently relocated to Switzerland after living in Venice for 30 years. |
69 | Lawrence Block – delightfully subversive series of books about John Keller, a hitman whose hobby is stamp collecting. Hard boiled, unexpected, and very funny. |
70 | The Big Country. The Donald Hamilton western? A good one! |
71 | My mother liked Mary Higgins Clark.. Her books frustrated me cause she was one writer where the murderer was always the nicest, most sympathetic, the-one-youd-never suspect character. One fourth into the book you could always guess whoddunit. Every damn book. |
72 | Ross Thomas is another good novelist, although hard to find. More of a caper style, not so much detective. |
73 | Tony Hillerman? Arthur Upfield, dated Australian? I often want a strong sense of place and those two give me that. Georges Simenon and Inspector Maigret? |
74 | Another series set in Buffalo NY was Dan Simmons Kurtz trilogy: Hardcase, Hard Freeze, and Hard as Nails. Joe Kurtz is a, well I guess the word is Hard, detective recently released from prison for a murder rap (he did it). It is tough-guy detective fiction brought walking the edge of parody. At the beginning of the second book he gets surrounded and without a gun after a visit to his parole officer. So he takes off his socks, puts coins in them, saps a cop in the men’s room, takes his gun, shoots one guy and throws the other out of a moving car after a confession. Simmons is a fine writer of both detective and SciFi. His Hyperion Cantos SciFi series is excellent. |
75 | And no one has mentioned the Hardy Boys! Or Nancy Drew! I vividly remember when I learned what the word “smock” meant reading Nancy Drew. My grandmother b. 1891 told me when I asked. She said she had worn a number of them in her time. Then showed me some pictures. |
76 | Kris Nelscott’s Smokey Dalton series is the best series I read last year. Smokey is a black PI, originally from Memphis, who relocates to Chicago. The series is set in the late 1960s. I devoured them over about 5 months, and was so entranced, I visited the author’s website and asked her when the next one is due (this year). |
77 | If you favor detectives with personal demons, Charlie Parker’s your man. |
78 | Do you like Anne Perry books? |
79 | I’ve always loved in particular mysteries that are not just whodunits but also give me a panoramic sense of a milieu I know nothing about; along those lines I’d recommend: James McClure, a South African novelist, wrote several mysteries set in 1970s South Africa featuring a pair of detectives, one Afrikaaner and one Bantu (The Steam Pig, Caterpillar Cop, etc.). |
80 | Likewise, glad someone finally mentioned the Tony Hillerman novels set on the Navaho lands in the Southwest, which convey a real feel for the lives (and the atmosphere) of Native Americans. A superb writer mining the same territory is James Welch (Fool’s Crow, Winter in the Blood, etc. |
81 | You can’t mention atmosphere without mentioning George Pelecanos–wonderful writing about street life in the DC area. Of course there’s Dick Francis; if he’s a bit too genteel/old school for you, try Mark Daniel (Sleek Bodies) whose portrayals of the British racing scene are much grittier and more hard-edged than Francis’ (and his hero is more than a bit of a louse). |
82 | James Crumley turned out several memorable, atmospheric, and somewhat depraved mysteries featuring Vietnam vet turned detective C.W. Sughrue, a bit over the top at times but fun. |
83 | Going through a phase of reading light hearted historical mysteries at the moment. I like Rhys Bowen’s Molly Malone and Her Royal Spyness series. The Molly Malone series is set in turn of the last century New York and features an Irish immigrant trying to make her way as NY’s first female private detective while Her Royal Spyness is set in the 1930’s and features Lady Georgiana, 32nd in line to the throne, who’s always being called upon by cousin Queen Mary to sort out some family scandal. Both heroines come through, though not without having to face situations both humorous and dangerous first. |
84 | Also must confess to a weakness for “gentlemen cracksmen” stories. Raffles of course, but also John Creasey’s, The Baron and The Toff series. Currently reading John G. Brandon’s “The Mailbag Robbery ” featuring The Wallflower. Yes, all gentlemen thieves had stupid names during the 1930’s. These are really hard to find but there is a website where you can download issues of Thriller magazine. Same warning as for Sayers, regarding the social attitudes of the time coming through, only worse. |
85 | I love Laurie R King’s books. I think her recasting of Sherlock Holmes to add a detective wife in his later years was brilliant and true to Conan Doyle’s canon, and her Martinelli stories are enjoyable as well. |
86 | Also wanted to add a cheer for Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night; never had much use for Lord Peter Wimsey as a protagonist, but GN has Harriet Vane as protagonist, sleuthing at a women’s college (a thinly disguised Shrewsbury College, Oxford), revealing unsuspected (by me, anyway) depth of detail about women’s lives and issues in academia circa 1935 (Sayers herself was one of the first women to get an Oxford degree). There’s a passion and force underlying her writing in Gaudy Night that I don’t remember in any of her other work. |
87 | Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe series. |
88 | I gotta give a shout out to Pellacanos. If you aren’t familiar with his books, He did a fair amount of screen writing for The Wire. |
89 | I love the “idea” of Longmire (old-school frontier detective colliding with modern ways) and have enjoyed the books; the series is shot entirely in New Mexico in absolutely gorgeous country (the books are set in Montana btw); the series tries a bit hard some of the time, for my taste, but certainly worth a look. |
90 | How is it possible that we are on comment 183 and no one has mentioned Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, the greatest of all the gumshoes? It’s like forgetting Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot! Seriously, he’s easily my favorite, and not just because I am now a Boston guy. I was reading him way before moving east. As a couple of bonuses, the audiobooks read by Joe Montagne are pretty great, and despite the fact Parker died maybe 5 years ago, he lives on through the officially licensed Ace Atkins who does a capable job with the hero. |
91 | Just finished reading The Ghost Detective by Scott William Carter. It’s a weird little book whose protagonist has baggage to fill a boxcar. I’m not much into the paranormal stuff. I tend to like my mysteries to be more grounded in the possible. This was interesting & puzzling enough for me to risk $1.99 (Bookbub) & to go ahead & download the next at a slightly higher price. It is based on the premise that the afterlife is not quite what one has been led to think. Anyway I read it in a day. |
92 | The Harry Hole series by Jo Nesbo is my current jam. |
93 | Jane Casey is writing the most humane mysteries of our era. |
94 | Early James Crumley is worth the investment. |
95 | “Good People” by Ewart Hutton is offbeat, brutal, nasty; worth it for hardcore readers. |
96 | The Quirke mysteries by “Benjamin Black” are essential literature. |
97 | I forget the author’s pseudonym, but read “I Was Dora Suarez,” despite it’s unpleasantness. |
98 | I’ve recently come across the Inspector Rutledge series, by Charles Todd, and I’ve enjoyed two novels in it so far. It’s set in England, post-WW I; Rutledge is a Scotland Yard detective who’s hiding a severe case of PTSD–he’s got an unfriendly voice in his head doing a running commentary. It feels slightly like a gimmick at times, but they’re well done. |
99 | W. J. Burley published a long series of novels about Wycliffe, a CID superintendent in that part of England. Solid police procedurals. |
100 | A lot of my mystery reading is sparked by TV or movie adaptations, so with that caveat, I’ll second a few suggestions for reading the original sources: I like Martin Beck and Kurt Wallander; Morse is fun, different from the TV series, as is Cadfael. Dalgleish and Cordelia Gray are great, as with most of P. D. James’s work. |
101 | The Richard Stark/Parker and Grofield novels. Stark is one of many pseudonyms Donald Westlake used. |
102 | No love for Lee Child and Reacher? |
103 | We’ve enjoyed Anthony Horowitz’s two meta-novels with Hawthorne. The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death. They’re not for everybody, though. |
104 | I’ve been enjoying William Kent Kruger’s Cork O’Connor series. Takes place in a small town in the Minnesota North Woods and includes characters from the Ojibwe (Chippewa) tribe. Cork himself is a quarter Ojibwe. |
105 | Another good read is the Robert Galbraith’s (JK Rowling) Cormoran Strike series. |
106 | Which reminds me: the Dortmunder series by Donald Westlake still brings me to tears of laughter. |
107 | did you ever read the Stark series? He wrote ten or twelve parker books between 65-74 and brought him back after a twenty year hiatus in 97 for six or seven more. |
108 | Came to this thread far too late to contribute anything but enthusiastic agreement with the genre and with Chandler, Hammett, Leonard, Mosely, Hillerman, and McKinty. |
109 | Can’t believe it took 117 comments to mention Ruth Rendell. THE master. Not only plotting, but psychological realism, which figures into the plots. She’s a great writer. She also writes as Barbara Vine when presenting dangerous psychological mischief. |
110 | Also, Fool’s Crow is one of the most underrated American novels. Period. There’s nothing else like it. |
111 | Dorothy Sayers? Daphne du Maurier? Josephine Tey? |
112 | Shout out for Peter Robinson (“In a Dry Season”), John Lawton’s WWII books and Philip Kerr (his Berlin trilogy is darned good). |
113 | What I enjoy about this community is the varied tastes we all have when it comes to our detective fiction.. so I’ll step off the beaten path a bit into the mystery/fantasy realm and put in a plug for Lois McMaster Bujold and her Penric stories (she also does the mystery/SF genre with the Miles Vorkosigan series). Also Glen Cook’s Garret books, which are a kind of fantasy noir (if you will). |
114 | As for the more conventional, I would second Lawrence Block as an author but a different series, I would suggest the Burgler books, as the crime solver is forced to determine who the real criminal is, lest he be on the hook for said crime. Carl Hiaasen is another favorite who blends reality/absurdity/humor with his stories. |
115 | I have to say I am a big fan of Val McDermid. I went to see her when she appeared at a local bookstore. She was thrilled with the TV series based on her books. In comparison, I went to an author event with Elizabeth George and she was not at all happy with the Inspector Lynley series. |
116 | Also (still) good are Nicolas Freeling’s inspector Van Der Valk novels from the ’60s. Much better than the mediocre TV series. Van de Wetering’s Outsider in Amsterdam is a bit of an homage to Freeling’s Love in Amsterdam. |
117 | Not a mysteries fan so much myself but Nero Wolfe’s Rex Stout is a major favorite, I’ve tried to collect all of them, if I remember, I may have actually managed. |
118 | If you like historical fiction, check out the Matthew Shardlake mysteries, by CJ Sansom. Set in the Tudor era, with a physically handicapped protagonist, they are full of fascinating information, history, and compelling characters. |
119 | I loved the Aurelio Zen novels. The BBC adaptations of a few of them with Rufus Sewell were not bad, but definitely not as good. |
120 | I still enjoy Nero Wolfe, but I don’t think Travis McGee has held up as well. |
121 | Among contemporary authors I think the Flavia de Luce books by Alan Bradley are a lot of fun. I also like the Lieutenant Billy Boyle books by James Benn, about an army detective in WWII Europe. |
122 | You might like Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series. Ruth has a little baggage of her own — her daughter was fathered by the local police chief who’s married to someone else — but it doesn’t get in the way. |
123 | I second all the recommendations for Michael Connelly, especially the recent works Late Show, Dark Sacred Night and Night Fire that feature a new character, detective Renee Ballard, who has been relegated to working the night shift after a run-in with a sexist superior officer. |
124 | Sue Grafton’s books have varying degrees of appeal for me, but T is For Trespass and U is For Undertow are interesting character studies. One issue that seems to put people off her books is that she sets them all in the 80s (her detective has to scramble to find a pay phone, or go to the library for information because no cellphones or Google) but I get a kick out of it. |
125 | Other writers I like: Kate Atkinson, Val McDermid. |
126 | Mystery author here. If you enjoy cozy mysteries (think Agatha Christie meets J.B. Fletcher), especially ones set on tropical islands, check out my Sanibel Island Mystery series. Main character (sleuth) is a female reporter. Also features an enigmatic detective, quirky characters, and a couple of felines. Fun, escapist reads. |
127 | ’m not a big novel reader these days, but some of my mystery-liking folks have been enjoying these short mysteries: Cowtown Crime and Cowtown Corpse. (Amazon) |
128 | I have recommended before (at boring length) Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren series. Set in an unnamed northern European country. Good cast of characters. The TV series on MHz was pretty faithful. |
129 | I was looking for something else and was reminded that Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow is an excellent mystery. The movie with Julia Ormond also is good. |
130 | Derek Raymond’s Factory Novels were recently reissued, dark as hell. NYRB series has reissued or newly translated many overlooked noir novels. |
131 | The Derek Strange novels are excellent. |
132 | Late to the party but I love quirky detectives too. Love the Kidd series by John Sandford – Kidd is an artist, a computer genius, and a criminal a la Robin Hood. |
133 | Also love Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Detective Carl Morck, who works cold cases at Department Q in Denmark. |
134 | I really like the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny, and The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. |
135 | Then there’s the Longmire series. Usually lots of fun, but last year’s Depth of Winter was brutal, and unlike his usual winter stories there’s no snow but a lot more violence than usual. This year’s book, Land of Wolves, seemed very mild after that. |
136 | Kellye Garrett has written two mysteries about an African American woman in Hollywood who accidentally becomes a sleuth. Hollywood Homicide and Hollywood Ending. Creative and very funny. |
137 | Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom are a pair of Swedish writers whose detective protagonist Ewert Grens is grumpy, rumpled, old-guard and a lot of fun; their Cell 8 is set in Stockholm and the American midwest—wonderful riff on how Europeans view the American mania for the death penalty, among other things. Several books in the series, pubbed in the US, I think. |
138 | I’ll just add a plug for “Fletch” (the book by Gregory McDonald, not the stupid movie)–another somewhat precedent-breaking (for the time) novel with a decidedly offbeat p.i. |
139 | Also, Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder mystery series starts good and become great. LB is just generally a great writer; he has 4 – 5 series characters and they are all good and different, some more humorous, some (like Matt Scudder) much darker. Always great dialogue. |
140 | If you like mysteries/procedurals set largely in the great outdoors, such as the Longmire and Cork O’Connor series already mentioned, others are Paul Doiron’s series about Mike Bowditch, a game warden in Maine; Steve Hamilton’s PI Alex McKnight series, set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; and Keith McCafferty’s Montana fly-fishing series centered on PI/artist Sean Stranahan. |
141 | I will put in a plug for Dorothy Sayers’s essay “Aristotle on Detective Fiction,” collected in a volume called Unpopular Opinions (Gollancz, 1946). |
142 | If you like Wallander, you might also like Arnaldur Indriðason’s Icelandic detective, Erlendur. |
143 | The Gripstra/DeGier stories still stand up very well. I think both Penny and Leon have riffed on, and further developed the old/young partner ideas that vdW presents so well (with Gammache/Beauvoir, and Brunetti/Vianello respectively) |
144 | vdW also created a great Japanese detective in “Inspector Sato’s Small Satori” |
145 | BLIND SIDE by William Bayer!!!! (I knew I’d remember it eventually.) Noir meets the grimy SoHo NYC of the eighties. A romance, a mystery, with photos. I loved it, and if I can’t find it in this dump in the next half-hour, I’ll order another one. (Bayer is very much worth a look too. Terrific writer.) (Crap–looks like Blind Side is out of print but available used. I’d go for the hardcover; you want the photo reproduction as good as possible) |
146 | Lately I’ve been reading Martin Walker’s Bruno series, set in the Perigord region of France – great background on my favorite province and nice character development…not much noir though. |
147 | The Darko Dawson books by Kwei Quartey – Set in Ghana, I found these really well-written and engaging. They give you a flavor of what Ghana is all about too, which is cool because I didn’t know anything about it. The first one I read was Murder at Cape Three Points. I’ve read everything of his that they have at our library, but it looks like I still haven’t read everything. |
148 | Various books by Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurðardóttir – These tend toward the macabre and often have a touch (but just a touch) of the supernatural. They can be kind of creepy, and the more recent ones have been kind of sad because they involve children. But still very well-written. The first one I read was Last Rituals, and it’s still my favorite of hers. |
149 | Soul Cage by Tetsuya Honda – This was the first book in the Reiko Himekawa series, and I enjoyed it. Reiko Himekawa has a difficult back story and the context of the book is the relentless misogyny and toxic culture in the Tokyo police, but somehow the story doesn’t quite get overwhelmed by all that. Just don’t bother with the new sequel – The Silent Dead. It was a real disappointment. I knew all of the major twists by chapter 3 (and I’m not one to try hard to figure these things out ahead of time, I’m an “along-for-the-ride” reader mostly, so you know it was bad), and most of the character development was cheap and uninspiring. But the first one was good. |
150 | Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto – This was pretty interesting, touching on lots of different aspects in modern Japanese history (WWII and after). I just read A Quiet Place by the same author, which was more recently published in English, and it was also interesting, although I didn’t like it as much as the other book. |
151 | The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada – This was fun. It’s constructed as if it’s the memoire of a couple of guys who solve an old murder from decades ago, so the clues that that “lead” the protagonists to uncover the truth are laid out for you and it’s constructed so that you can figure things out before everything is revealed. Still not easy, but different! |
152 | The Devotion of Suspect X is excellent, as are the other books in the Detective Galileo series. But in Under the Midnight Sun you really only see a detective in the first chapter and final few chapters. The story just isn’t about a detective at all, it’s about people associated with a particular murder and how their lives progress over the next several decades. A different experience, and he’s a really talented author, extremely popular in Japan. |
153 | Bartholomew Gill’s Detective Peter McGarr. Set mostly in Dublin. Good writing, interesting stories. |
154 | R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke series. The mysteries are usually easy to figure and there is a fair amount of the casual racism of the time, but, they do give a nice sense of England back then. |
155 | The Lawrence Sanders Edward X. Delaney series. Sanders was extremely popular back in the day, but, I rarely see him mentioned in discussions like these. Solid procedurals, smooth reads. It’ll be three in the morning before you know it, reading them. |
156 | Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series. Quick reads. |
157 | G.M. Ford’s Leo Waterman series. Nicely written with a fairly humorous style. His Frank Corso series is darker. |
158 | Robert Tanenbaum’s Butch Carp series. Karp is a D.A. in NYC. As the series progresses, he gets married and has kids and the family is rather unusual. The books were actually ghost written by a relative of his, who finally got fed up with the lack of recognition and money. Tanenbaum wrote the last couple three books in the series and they are awful. |
159 | Emma Latham’s John Putman Thatcher series. Thatcher is a VP at the Sloan Guaranty Trust but always gets dragged into murder cases. Another series with a light, humorous touch. |
160 | M. C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series. He is a constable in the Scottish highlands and just his name gives you a sense of what to expect. |
161 | Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy series. Lovejoy is a pretty unscrupulous antique dealer who has a sixth sense about ferreting out fake antiques from genuine. Lots of interesting tidbits about antiques and fake antiques. The series runs out of steam and that last 4 or 5 books aren’t very good. |
162 | John Dickson Carr. Master of the locked room mystery. He has several series with several main characters. Dr. Gideon Fell is probably the best known. Carr’s writing tends to be somewhat on the didactic side with longish discussions of just what a locked room mystery is and how to describe one without cheating the reader. He can write some nice, moody immersive scenes, as well. |
163 | Just remembered another game warden mystery, this one set in VT, that I read recently and loved: A Borrowing of Bones by Paula Munier. U.S. Game Warden Troy Walker has a Newfie-mix search and rescue dog named Susie Bear. Former Army MP Mercy Carr has a retired bomb-sniffing Belgian Malinois named Elvis. She has no authority to investigate anything, but you know how that goes. A friend read this and said she didn’t like it because it was “too doggy”–high praise, to me. And, because I checked these details on Amazon, I learned that there’s now a sequel called Blind Search, so thank you, Dimmsdale! |
164 | Two women authors I learned about in my 20’s: Sarah Caudwell’s very British barrister mysteries from the ’80’s – Thus was Adonis Murdered, The Shortest Way to Hades, and The Sirens Sang of Murder. And Carolyn Heilbrun, a Columbia scholar who wrote academic mysteries under the name Amanda Cross. Her lead was Kate Fansler, who stumbled into campus crimes and intrigue – Death in a Tenured Position, is one title I can remember. |
165 | can’t let the thread end without mentioning K.C. Constantine–his protagonist, Mario Balzic, is a small-town chief of police in central PA, and his books are full of gritty working-class detail. It’s a town where everybody knows everybody, but doesn’t necessarily like or TRUST everybody. Easy pace, terrific observation of a time and a place, utterly believable (no ‘convenient’ plot machinations here!) and a flavor of compassion running through all his books. (Constantine was the pen name for a writing professor at a small PA college, by the way.) |
166 | They also remind me of the terrific Japanese and Korean investigation films I love, such as Bong Joon-Ho’s Memories of Murder and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning. |
167 | Add in J K Rowling’s adult mysteries—the Cormoran Strike series-under pseudonym, Robert Galbraith. And Donna Leon’s mysteries set in Venice. |
168 | May I humbly suggest my own mystery, Same River Twice? (Janet Poland) The main character doesn’t quite match Rebus and Bosch for noir complications, but she’s a recluse for extremely good reasons. It’s on Amazon. |
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