Recommended Mystery Novels

24 Nov 2009 09:47

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Including true crime and spy stories, for lack of better places to put them.

See also: Mysteries to read.

• Bruce Alexander (pseud. of Bruce Alexander Cook)
  • Blind Justice
  • Murder in Grub Street
  • Watery Grave
  • Person or Persons Unknown
• Eric Ambler
  • The Ability to Kill [Nonfiction]
  • Background to Danger
  • Cause for Alarm
  • A Coffin for Dimitrios
  • Journey into Fear
  • Judgment on Deltchev
  • The Levanter
  • The Light of Day [filmed as Topakpi, unseen by me]
  • A Passage of Arms
  • The Schermer Inheritance
  • State of Siege
• Donna Andrews
  • Murder, with Peacocks
  • Murder with Puffins
  • Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingoes
• Noreen Ayres
  1. A World the Color of Salt
  2. Carcass Trade
• Margaret Barrett and Charles Dennis, Given the Crime
• Nancy Bartholomew [Very light, but fun if approached in the right spirit]
  1. Miracle Strip
  2. Drag Strip
  3. Film Strip
• Cheryl Benard, Moghul Buffet
• John Billheimer, Highway Robbery
• C. J. Box
  1. Out of Season
  2. Savage Run
  3. Winterkill
  4. Trophy Hunt
• Edgar Box (pseud. of Gore Vidal) [Review]
  • Death in the Fifth Position
  • Death Likes It Hot
  • Death Before Bedtime
• Ken Bruen, The Guards
• Paul Bryers, The Prayer of the Bone
• Chelsea Cain
  1. Heartsick
  2. Sweetheart
  3. Evil at Heart
• Andrea Camilleri [A series, but I've read them out of order without any discernable loss, so I won't try straighten them out here]
  • Excursion to Tindari
  • The Heat of August
  • The Patience of the Spider
  • The Shape of Water
  • The Smell of the Night
  • The Snack Thief
  • The Terra-cotta Dog
  • Voice of the Violin
  • Rounding the Mark
  • The Patience of the Spider
  • The Paper Moon
• Sarah Caudwell [Pseud. of the late Sarah Caudwell Cockburn, sister of the unfortunate leftist columnist Alexander Cockburn.]
  • Thus Was Adonis Murdered
  • The Sirens Sang of Murder
  • The Shortest Route to Hades
  • The Sibyl in Her Grave
• Karen Rose Cercone
  1. Steel Ashes
  2. Blood Tracks
  3. Coal Bones
• Amanda Cross (pseud. of Prof. Dr. Carolyn Heilbrun)
  • The James Joyce Murder
  • Poetic Justice
  • The Theban Mysteries
• Avram Davidson [General Review: Avram Davidson's Afterlife]
  • The Enquiries of Dr. Eszterhazy [There's a later collection, Adventures of Dr. Eszterhazy, with more stories; I've not yet laid hands upon it.]
  • The Investigations of Avram Davidson [Posthumous collection, ed. Grania Davis and Richard A. Lupoff]
• Lindsay Davis
  1. Silver Pigs [Review by Danny Yee]
  2. Shadows in Bronze
  3. Venus in Copper
  4. The Iron Hand of Mars
  5. Poseidon's Gold
  6. Last Act in Palmyra
  7. Time to Depart
  8. A Dying Light in Corduba
  9. Three Hands in the Fountain
  10. Two for the Lions
  11. One Virgin too Many
• Bill DeAndrea [The "Killed In" books are a series, but I won't try to sort out order]
  • Fatal Elixir
  • Five O'Clock Lightning
  • The Hog Murders
  • Killed in the Ratings
  • Killed in Paradise
  • Killed on the Rocks
  • Killed in the Fog
  • Killed in Fringe Time
  • Killed in the Act
  • The Lunatic Fringe
• Margaret Anne Doody
  • Aristotle Detective
  • Aristotle and the Secrets of Life
• Aaron Elkins
  • Fellowship of Fear
  • The Dark Place
  • Murder in the Queen's Armes
  • Old Bones
  • Curses!
  • Icy Clutches
  • Make No Bones
  • Dead Men's Hearts
  • Twenty Blue Devils
• Janet Evanonvich [The series loses interest after a while. Maybe even before the 4th book...]
  • One for the Money
  • Two for the Dough
  • Three to Get Deadly
  • Four to Score
• Robert Ferrigno
  • Cheshire Moon
  • Dead Silent
  • Flinch
  • Heart Breaker
  • The Horse Latitudes
• Leslie Forbes, Waking Raphael
• John M. Ford, Scholars of Night
• Alan Furst [To be completely honest, Furst strikes me as imitation Eric Ambler, differing mostly in being more explicit about sex. However, it is good imitation Ambler, and since the original article is no longer being produced...]
  • Night Soldiers
  • Kingdom of Shadows
  • Dark Star [Review by Brad DeLong]
• Dale Furutani
  1. Death at the Crossroads
  2. Jade Palace Vendetta
• Nicholas Freeling, Auprès de ma blonde
• Randall Garrett
  • Too Many Magicians
  • Lord Darcy Investigates
  • Murder and Magic
• Nadia Gordon
  1. Sharpshooter
  2. Death by the Glass
  3. Murder Alfresco
  4. Lethal Vintage [comments]
• Laurence Gough, Heartbreaker
• Sarah Graves
  1. The Dead Cat Bounce
  2. Triple Witch
  3. Wicked Fix
  4. Repair to Her Grave
  5. Wicked Fix
  6. Unhinged
  7. Mallets Aforethought
  8. Tool and Die
  9. Nail Biter
• Jane Haddam (pseud. of Orania Papazoglou; see below)
  • Not a Creature Was Stirring
  • Precious Blood
  • Acts of Darkness
  • Quoth the Raven
  • Great Day for the Deadly
  • A Stillness in Bethlehem
  • Feast of Murder
  • Dear Old Dead
  • Fountain of Death
  • Murder Superior
  • Festival of Deaths
  • Bleeding Hearts
  • And One to Die On
  • Deadly Beloved
  • Baptism in Blood
  • Skeleton Key
  • True Believers
  • Somebody Else's Music
  • Conspiracy Theory
  • The Headmaster's Wife
  • Hardscrabble Road
  • Glasshouses
  • Cheating at Solitaire
  • Living Witness
• Steve Hamilton, A Cold Day in Paradise
• Charlaine Harris, Last Scene Alive
• Sparkle Hayter (just looks like a pseud.)
  1. What's a Girl Gotta Do?
  2. Nice Girls Finish Last
  3. Revenge of the Cootie Girls
  4. The Last Manly Man
• Lauren Henderson
  1. Black Rubber Dress
  2. Freeze My Margarita
  3. Strawberry Tattoo
  4. Chained
• Carl Hiaasen
  • Double Whammy
  • Native Tongue
  • Striptease
  • Stormy Weather
  • Tourist Season
• Tony Hillerman
• Peter Hoeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow [Except that the ending really makes no sense at all.]
• Elizabeth Ironside, A Very Private Enterprise
• Stan Jones
  1. White Sky, Black Ice
  2. Shaman Pass
• B. B. Jordan (pseud. of Frances Brodsky), Principal Investigation [The sequel, Secondary Immunization, was disappointing.]
• Jane Langton
• Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island
• Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn
• Laura Lippman [Baltimore mysteries (except for In Big Trouble), which are supposed to be really good at conveying the feel of the city. I can't speak to that, but they did help me recognize some of the neighborhoods and even restaurants when I went there for a job interview in 2001.]
  1. Balitmore Blues
  2. Charm City
  3. Butcher's Hill
  4. In Big Trouble
  5. The Sugar House
  6. In a Strange City
  7. The Last Place
  8. By a Spider's Thread
  9. No Good Deed
• Margaret Maron
  1. Bootlegger's Daughter
  2. Southern Discomfort
  3. Shooting at Loons
  4. Up Jumps the Devil
  5. Killer Market
  6. Home Fires
  7. Uncommon Clay
• William Marshall ["Yellowthread Street" mysteries, police procedurals set in Hong Kong. A weird combination of suspense, detection, broad humor and really disturbing situations, which works better than it has any right to, and sometimes (e.g., Perfect End, Frogmouth, and especially Out of Nowhere) leaves me twitchy. --- The internal chronology of the books is unimportant, so I've listed them alphabetically.]
  • Frogmouth
  • Gelignite
  • The Hatchet Man
  • Head First
  • Inches
  • Nightmare Syndrome
  • Out of Nowhere
  • Perfect End
  • Roadshow
  • Sci Fi
  • Skullduggery
  • Thin Air
  • War Machine
  • Yellowthread Street
• Sujata Massey, The Salaryman's Wife
• Seicho Matsumoto
  • Inspector Imanishi Investigates
  • Points and Lines
• Henry Mazel Murderously Incorrect [Review by Danny Yee]
• Kirk Mitchell [Police procedurals, set in various parts of Indian Country. Benefit a bit from reading in order, though it's not strictly required.]
  1. Cry Dance
  2. Spirit Sickness
  3. Ancient Ones
  4. Sky Woman Falling
  5. Dance of the Thunder Dogs
• John Mortimer
  • Rumpole of the Bailey
  • The Trials of Rumpole
  • Rumpole's Return
  • Rumpole for the Defense
  • Rumpole and the Golden Thread
  • Rumpole's Last Case
  • Rumpole and the Age of Miracles
  • Rumpole à la Carte
  • Rumpole and the Angel of Death
• Katy Munger
  • Legwork
  • Money to Burn
  • Bad to the Bone
  • Better Off Dead
  • Out of Time
• Jake Page
  1. The Stolen Gods [But maybe only those who have lived in Santa Fe can fully appreciate the delicious absurdity of the car chase]
  2. The Deadly Canyon
  3. The Knotted Strings
  4. The Lethal Partner
• Orania Papazoglou
  • Charisma [Very good but very disturbing novel]
  • Patience McKenna books
    • Death's Savage Passion
    • Sweet Savage Death
    • Wicked Loving Murder
    • Rich, Radiant Slaughter
    • Once and Always Murder
• I. J. Parker [Narrative order, which is not the same as the publication order]
  1. The Dragon Scroll [Remarks]
  2. Rashomon Gate [Remarks]
  3. Black Arrow [Remarks]
  4. Island of Exiles [Remarks]
  5. The Hell Screen [Remarks]
  6. The Convict's Sword [Remarks]
• Jill Paton Walsh, The Wyndham Case
• Elizabeth Peters
• Richard Price
  • Clockers
  • Freedomland
• Phil Rickman [Nominally horror novels tracking the career of the Reverend Merrily Watkins, an Anglican priest working in a particularly depressed area of the Welsh-English border, they follow the British ghost-story convention of having a parallel "rational" explanation, so they can be enjoyed as mysteries with creepy effects. Sometimes, to be honest, Rickman's non-supernatural explanations are so contrived any thinking person would go for the ghosts.]
  1. The Wine of Angels
  2. Midwinter of the Spirit
  3. A Crown of Lights
  4. The Cure of Souls
  5. The Lamp of the Wicked
  6. Prayer of the Night Shepherd
  7. The Smile of a Ghost
  8. The Remains of An Altar
  9. Fabric of Sin
• Madeleine E. Robins, Point of Honour [Mini-review]
• Laura Joh Rowland [Historical mysteries in Tokugawa-era Japan. Series fatigue set in for me around volume 4...]
  1. Shinju
  2. Bundori
  3. The Concubine's Tattoo
  4. The Samurai's Wife
• C. J. Sansom
  1. Dissolution
  2. Dark Fire
  3. Sovereign
  4. Revelation
• Dorothy Sayers
• Steven Saylor
  • Roman Blood
  • A Murder on the Apian Way
• Aileen Schumacher [Engineering mysteries]
  1. Engineered for Murder
  2. Framework for Death
  3. Affirmative Reaction
  4. Rosewood's Ashes
• Roger L. Simon, Raising the Dead
• Dan Simmons
  • Darwin's Blade
  • Hardcase
• Karin Slaughter [Warning: these are extremely disturbing novels; the first two are about, respectively, serial rape and murder, and child pornography. The others are not much lighter, if at all. But they are very well-written.]
  • "Grant County" series:
    1. Blindsighted
    2. Kisscut
    3. A Faint Cold Fear
    4. Indelible
    5. Faithless
    6. Beyond Reach
  • 1. Triptych
    2. Fractured
  • Undone [fuses the two series]
• Julia Spencer-Fleming
  1. In the Bleak Midwinter
  2. A Fountain Full of Blood
  3. Out of the Deep I Cry
  4. To Darkness and to Death
• Rex Stout
• Peter Straub [Straub normally writes horror novels, and these get marketed as such, but they're really excellent mystery novels and thrillers, with no supernatural elements at all, unless I've completely misunderstood them. Which is possible, since he's tricky.]
  • The Hellfire Club
  • The Blue Rose books [Three interlocking but completely incompatible renditions of a story about a killer called "Blue Rose", and three different disguises for Straub's native city of Milwaukee; this is impressive, if you notice it, but not distracting in the least if you don't. Reading Koko and The Throat could convince you that Straub fought in the Vietnam War, but then, reading his Ghost Story could convince you that he lived in a haunted town in upstate New York.]
    1. Koko
    2. Mystery
    3. The Throat
• Dorothy Sucher, Dead Men Don't Give Seminars [Good observations of what theoretical physicists are like; also a fun novel. But I can attest, on the basis of my experience as a graduate student, that the title, however fine, is not strictly true.]
• Leann Sweeney, Pick Your Poison
• Akimitsu Takagi, The Tattoo Murder Case [Nowhere near as kinky as the cover-blurbs make it sound]
• James Tucker [Pittsburgh settings, but I read and enjoyed the first two before moving here]
  1. Abra Cadaver
  2. Hocus Corpus
  3. Tragic Wand
• Janwillen van de Wettering, Robert Van Gulik: His Life, His Work
• Robert Hans van Gulik [Unfortunately, I can't really put these in narrative order, since I haven't any copies to hand...]
  • (trans.) Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee: Dee Gong An
  • The Chinese Nail Murders [Review by Danny Yee]
  • The Chinese Gold Murders [Review by Danny Yee]
  • The Chinese Maze Murders
  • Chinese Lake Murders
  • The Moneky and the Tiger
  • Judge Dee at Work
  • The Phantom of the Temple
  • The Haunted Monastery
  • Murder in Canton
  • The Red Pavillion
  • The Willow Pattern
  • Poets and Murder
• John Holbrook Vance
• Fred Vargas, Seeking Whom He May Devour
• Donald Westlake
  • Kahawa
  • Nobody's Perfect