Here are 4 books that A Donald Strachey Mystery fans have personally recommended once you finish the A Donald Strachey Mystery series.
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When I was nine years old, I joined a book club. The members were me and my dad. He’d throw detective books into my room when he was done with them, and I’d read them. We’d never discuss them. But that’s why hard-boiled detective fiction is comfort food for me and how I know it so well. I’ve been binging on it most of my life and learning everything the shamus-philosophers had to teach me. Now I write my own, the Ben Ames series, for the joy of paying it forward.
As a kid, I didn’t want to be a princess. I wanted to be Archie Goodwin.
Archie’s the legman to genius detective Nero Wolfe, and he’s the most self-possessed guy I know. “I’m always at home,” he says, “wherever I am.” I grew up wanting to be that go-to person, given the tough jobs because I’m capable, and trusted because I’m decent and fair. I wanted a boss who said things like “I can dodge folly without backing into fear.”
In my real life, I muddle and compromise and results are tough to parse. In this book, and any Nero Wolfe book, it’s a better world. Things don’t work out perfectly, but they do work out brilliantly and Archie knows his work has been, in Wolfe’s highest praise, “Satisfactory.”
Paul Chapin’s college cronies never quite forgave themselves for instigating the tragic prank that left their friend a twisted cripple. Yet with their hazing days at Harvard far behind them, they had every reason to believe that Paul himself had forgiven them—until a class reunion ends in a fatal fall, and the poems, swearing deadly retribution, begin to arrive. Now this league of frightened men is desperate for Nero Wolfe’s help. But are Wolfe’s brilliance and Archie’s tenacity enough to outwit a killer so cunning he can plot and execute in plain sight?
When I was nine years old, I joined a book club. The members were me and my dad. He’d throw detective books into my room when he was done with them, and I’d read them. We’d never discuss them. But that’s why hard-boiled detective fiction is comfort food for me and how I know it so well. I’ve been binging on it most of my life and learning everything the shamus-philosophers had to teach me. Now I write my own, the Ben Ames series, for the joy of paying it forward.
Falling Angel reminds me of an end of the night dream—a hazy and disjointed story, with music I can barely hear and a puzzle I know I’ve solved before though, at the moment, I can’t remember how.
It shouldn’t be comforting, since it comes from a terrible place and goes to a worse one, but there’s beauty and mystery in the in-between and I want to bask there, like someone forever adding hot water to a bath to keep it warm. It’s a relatively cozy spot despite the clouds gathering outside and it feels like life to me, existing in a between place where I can’t stay forever.
An ending comes for everyone. But, for now, there’s still time and it’s okay.
An outstanding, spellbinding novel of murder, mystery and the occult, Falling Angel pits a tough New York private eye, Harry Angel against the most fearsome adversary a detective ever faced - one Louis Cyphre. For Angel a routine missing-persons case turns into a fiendish nightmare of voodoo and black magic, of dizzying peril and violent death - a world in which the shadow he chases seems to be the shadow he casts.
I’ve been writing crime stories since I was a child. They entertained me and helped me cope with a lot of family strife. My first novel was published in college and sold to the movies, which got me into screenwriting, leading to writing hundreds of hours of TV and fifty novels to date. The one thing all of my stories share is humor because I believe it’s an essential part of life–and of memorable story-telling. Humor makes characters come alive, revealing shades of personality and depths of emotion you wouldn’t otherwise see. Here are five books that taught me that it’s true and that continue to influence me as a writer.
This book changed my life. Honest to God. I always wanted to be a novelist and TV writer, but this book made me believe I could. I can still remember exactly where I was when I read it–late at night, in a sleeping bag in an old wooden cabin at Loon Lake, Washington.
I marveled at how the characters and story emerged almost entirely through the dialogue, which is so snappy, clever, and funny that the original book cover was just an excerpt of it against a black background. But MacDonald also manages to strike a perfect balance between laugh-out-loud humor and the mystery-crime story he’s telling without sacrificing the puzzle's suspense or pleasure.
I didn’t know if I could ever be a prose stylist, but this book showed me that I didn’t have to be. I just needed to capture how people talked, how they saw the world, and…
Book one in the bestselling mystery series that brought to life an iconic literary antihero of subversion and schemes Fletch, investigative reporter extraordinaire, can’t be bothered with deadlines or expense-account budgets when it comes to getting his story.
Working undercover at the beach to dig up a drug-trafficking scheme for his next blockbuster piece, Fletch is invited into a much deeper narrative. Alan Stanwyk, CEO of Collins Aviation and all-around family man, mistakes the reporter for a strung-out vagabond and asks him for a favor: kill him and escape to Brazil with $50,000. Intrigued, Fletch can’t help but dig into…
When I was nine years old, I joined a book club. The members were me and my dad. He’d throw detective books into my room when he was done with them, and I’d read them. We’d never discuss them. But that’s why hard-boiled detective fiction is comfort food for me and how I know it so well. I’ve been binging on it most of my life and learning everything the shamus-philosophers had to teach me. Now I write my own, the Ben Ames series, for the joy of paying it forward.
Early Autumn made me cry from two directions. As a tween, reading about Spenser’s rescue of Paul, a shut-down, emotionally neglected boy that Spenser first assesses as “an unlovely little bastard”, I cried in sympathy and relief for Paul.
Over a summer, Spenser taught him skills, built up his strength and gave him the confidence to find his own dreams, before leaving him at the doorway to the life he now knew he wanted. As an adult, I cried with joy for Spenser, who connected with a stranger, taught what he had to teach, and changed a life.
Really helping someone in a lasting way is rarely so easy as it was in this book, but it’s a worthwhile dream and this Cinderella story gets me every time.
“[Robert B.] Parker's brilliance is in his simple dialogue, and in Spenser.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
A bitter divorce is only the beginning. First the father hires thugs to kidnap his son. Then the mother hires Spenser to get the boy back. But as soon as Spenser senses the lay of the land, he decides to do some kidnapping of his own.
With a contract out on his life, he heads for the Maine woods, determined to give a puny 15 year old a crash course in survival and to beat his dangerous opponents at their own brutal game.
