Mysteries
23 Aug 2008 13:19
I've spun off the list of recommendations into a separate page. True crime goes here too, for want of a better spot.
- To read:
- Boris Akunin, The Winter Queen
- Eric Ambler
- The Dark Frontier
- Dirty Story
- Doctor Frigo
- The Intercom Conspiracy
- A Kind of Anger
- The Siege of the Villa Lipp
- Poul Anderson
- Perish by the Sword
- Murder by the Books
- Sarah Andrews
- Margot Arnold
- Kate Atkinson, Case Histories
- Robert Barnard
- The Bad Samaritan
- The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori
- Death of an Old Goat
- Dave Barry, Big Trouble
- Nancy Bartholomew, Strip Poker
- Benjamin Black, Christine Falls
- Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
- Joan Brady, Bleedout
- Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers
- Dorothy Cannell
- How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams
- How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law
- John Case, The First Horseman [Thriller about a millenarian cult (which sounds like it's based on Aum Shinrikyo, only with more of an environmentalist ideology) and a genetically-engineered plague based on the 1918 influenza. Thanks to Mark Worden for the rec.]
- Raymond Chandler
- Douglas Clark [Police procedurals; ingenious, "scientific" ways to die]
- Max Allan Collins, The History of Mystery
- Martha Conley, Growing Light
- K. C. Constantine, Cranks and Shadows
- Susan Rogers Cooper, Doctors and Lawyers and Such
- Robert Crais
- The Monkey's Raincoat
- L.A. Requiuem
- Sunset Express
- Amanda Cross
- An Imperfect Spy
- The Players Come Again
- The Puzzled Heart
- The Question of Max
- A Trap for Fools
- Bill DeAndrea
- Cronus
- Killed on the Ice
- The Detective and the Toga
- Michael Dibdin
- Vendetta
- Ratking
- Cabal
- Dark Lagoon
- Cosi Fan Tutti
- Margaret Anne Doody
- Aristotle and Poetic Justice
- Poison in Athens
- Mysteries of Eleusis
- James D. Doss, White Shell Woman
- Susan Dunlap
- Cop Out
- Not Exactly a Brahmin
- Jerrilyn Farmer, Immaculate Reception
- Robert Ferrigno
- Dead Man's Dance
- Scavenger Hunt
- Leslie Forbes
- Bombay Ice
- Fish, Blood, and Bone
- Karin Fossum, Don't Look Back
- Christopher Fowler, Ten Second Staircase
- Nicholas Freeling, Cold Iron
- Alan Furst [Many more, too...]
- Blood of Victory
- Dark Voyage
- The Polish Officer
- Red Gold
- The World at Night
- Jim Fusilli, Hard, Hard City
- Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza, Southwesterly Wind
- Anne George, Murder Shoots the Bull
- Nadia Gordon
- Sharpshooter
- Murder Alfresco
- Joe Gores
- 32 Cadillacs
- Dead Skip
- Laurence Gough, "Willow and Parker" series (except Heartbreaker, which I've read)
- Annie Griffin, Date with the Perfect Dead Man
- Martha Grimes, Rainbow's End
- Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
- Rick Hanson, Body Parts
- George Harrar, The Spinning Man
- Charlaine Harris
- A Fool and His Honey
- Shakespeare's Landlord
- Shakespeare's Champion
- Shakespeare's Trollop
- Lauren Henderson, Pretty Boy
- Hiaasen
- Basket Case
- Powder Burn
- Trap Line
- A Death in China
- Susan Holtzer, The Wedding Game: A Mystery at the University of Michigan
- Richard Hoyt, Whoo?
- Elizabeth Ironsides
- Death in the Garden
- The Accomplice
- "Marshall Jevons"
- A Deadly Indifference
- Fatal Equilibrium
- Catherine Jinks, The Inquisitor [Review by Danny Yee]
- D. J. H. Jones, Murder in the New Age
- Clarence Budington Kelland, The Artless Heiress
- Henry Kisor, Cache of Corpses
- Gary Krist, Chaos Theory
- Jane Langton
- Emily Dickinson Is Dead
- The Shortest Day
- Gaylord Larson ["writes a series about an agnostic/rationalist detective who has various jobs in fundamentalist Christian colleges and solves crimes in those places... really first rate" --- Jane Haddam on dorothy-L, of happy memory]
- Don Lee, Country of Origin
- Denis Lehane
- A Drink Before the War
- Darkness, Take My Hand
- Sacred
- Gone, Baby, Gone
- Mystic River
- Elmore Leonard [w/ thanks to John Burke for recommendations]
- Bandits
- Cat Chaser
- City Primeval
- Freaky Deaky
- Get Shorty
- Glitz
- Gold Coast
- La Brava
- The Moonshine War
- Out of Sight
- Pagan Babies
- Pronto
- Rum Punch
- Split Images
- Stick
- Swag
- Tishomingo Blues
- Herbert Lieberman, Brilliant Kids
- Laura Lippman
- Every Secret Thing
- To the Power of Three
- What the Dead Know
- Peter Lovesey, The Reaper
- Shaun Maloney, Stiff ["Set in Melbourne amid the machinations of the Australian Labor Party, this book is extremely funny, beautifully written and for those of us of the left persuasion, scarily close to the bone" --- from review in rec.arts.books.reviews by Katrina Beard]
- Henning Mankell, Before the Frost
- Lia Matera
- Seicho Matsumoto, The Voice
- Lise McClendon, The Bluejay Shaman
- Miyuki Miyabe, All She Was Worth
- Bob Morris, Bahamarama
- John Mortimer
- Rumpole on Trial
- The Penge Bungalow Murders
- Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
- Magdalen Nabb, Some Bitter Fruit
- Leslie O'Kane, The Cold Hard Fax
- Jill Paton Walsh
- A Piece of Justice
- Debts of Dishonour
- The Bad Quarto
- Rebecca Pawel, The Law of Return
- George P. Pelecanos
- Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Queen of the South
- Marissa Piesman
- Close Quarters
- Survival Instincts
- Unorthodox Practices
- Lev Raphael, The Edith Wharton Murder
- Ruth Rendell
- A Demon in My View
- Gallowglass [as "Barbara Vine"]
- The Speaker of Mandarin
- To Fear a Painted Devil
- Robert Rice, The Nature of Midnight
- Candace Robb, The Lady Chapel
- Rebecca Rothenberg, The Shy Tulip Murders
- C. J. Sansom
- Dark Fire
- Sovereign
- Barbara Sarenella
- No Human Involved
- No Offense Intended
- David Schmid, Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture
- Lisa Scottoline
- Everywhere that Mary Went
- Legal Tender
- Mistaken Identity
- Running from the Law
- Mabel Seeley
- The Beckoning Door
- The Chuckling Fingers
- The Whispering Cup
- Catherine Shaw, The Three Body Problem [That three body problem, no less]
- Jenny Siler, Easy Money
- David "Mr. Laura Lippman" Simon, Homicide
- John Sladek, Invisible Green
- James B. Stewart, Blind Eye [#2 Amazon seller with the Massachusetts Medical Society, as of 22 Feb. 2000.]
- Dorothy Sucher, Dead Men Don't Marry
- Akimitsu Takagi
- Honeymoon to Nowhere
- The Informer
- Stefan Timmermans, Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths [Blurb]
- Marilyn Todd
- I, Claudia
- Virgin Territory
- Man Eater
- Kathy Hogan Trocheck
- Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies
- Mark Urban, The Linguist
- T. C. Van Adler, St. Agatha's Breast [Review by Danny Yee]
- Fred Vargas [Thanks to Jan Johnson for the recommendation]
- Have Mercy on Us All
- Three Evangelists
- Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand
- Patricia Wentworth
- Out of the Past
- Wicked Uncle
- Donald Westlake
- Cops and Robbers
- Don't Ask
- Put a Lid on It
- Humans [I know, it's not really a mystery]
- Polly Whitney
- Until Death
- Until the End of Time
- Don Winslow, A Long Walk up the Waterslide
- L. R. Wright, A Touch of Panic
- Rafael Yglesias, The Murderer Next Door
