49 books like Aaron Falk

What a deeply atmospheric, evocative read! I’d been meaning to dive into a Jane Harper novel for some time, and I’m so pleased this is where I chose to start. I’ve done what we Aussies call ‘The Big Lap’ a couple of times, touring around the coast of Australia, then up through the arid center, before exploring the remote reaches of Western Australia.

This book brings the vastness of this landscape to life so perfectly without overstating or overdramatizing it. This character-driven novel is compelling, leaving me with a sense of being intimately acquainted with the families living on the isolated properties … and of their fear, knowing a murderer may be in their midst.

This book is fresh in my mind because I was lucky enough to read an advanced copy (the book will be out in February 2025) and felt myself swept across a stormy sea into one of the most tightly-knit communities I’ve read in a thriller. The Scottish island of Eilean Eadar has around 60 residents, one computer between the whole island, no mobile signal, and a priest who seems to control everything.

It is a perfect set-up for a mystery, as two detectives head over from the mainland to investigate an apparent suicide. The weather is wild, the island’s customs are archaic, and gossip travels faster than the gale-force winds. I love island settings–the sense of being cut off from the rest of the world–and I found this one irresistible.

There is a feeling that everybody is being watched all the time and that their positions in the community are… show more.

It’s no secret that I have a real fondness for Alaska–its landscape, people, and singular quirkiness. Southeast Alaska, where this novel is set, is its own idiosyncratic microcosm.

The bars for serious drinking, the sideways rain, the grab bag of misfit characters–is John Straley at his best in this novel. In his no-holds-barred yet fond portrayal of Alaska, where his protagonist spends most of his days in an alcoholic but observant haze, the 49th state is like a walk-on character actor who ends up eating the scenery. 

I like all of the Dave Robicheaux novels, but this is probably my favorite. Burke captures the sights and sounds of the Louisiana Bayou with the intense affection of someone raised on the Gulf Coast. In fact, I think he treats the setting as lovingly as Robicheaux treats Alafair, the Salvadoran orphan girl he rescues from a downed plane and raises as his own.

The three-legged raccoon, the wet moss hanging ghostlike from dead cypress, the blue crab shelled with a wooden mallet–just a few of the images that add to the patina of New Iberia. Much of the action takes place in Montana, but Robichaux–and James Lee Burke–return home at the end of the book to the bayou they both love.

Two young women set up a gift shop in a quiet rural village and deal with any threats to their security in their own outrageous fashion. This is hilarious and utterly original. A short marvellous romp, where nothing is off limits. The basic storyline resembles that of my book with a very different but equally delightful treatment. John Bowen wrote several brilliant novels, and I love them all. I think it’s a great shame that he is almost forgotten, when his stories are so enjoyable. He breaks rules, can be very shocking, and always surprising, with delicious twists and turns.

Another murder mystery set in a small peaceful community—this time near San Francisco. It is the first featuring Kate Martinelli as the detective, who is new to the job. I found the characters totally credible and appealing, and the theme of portrait painting as a way of revealing the depths of someone’s personality was powerfully well done. It stayed with me long after I finished, and is wonderfully original. Laurie R. King is very prolific, and I find the quality of her work quite variable. But when she’s good, she’s fantastic.

Though this is Penny’s first in the “Three Pines” series featuring CI Armand Gamache, I’ll confess that I initially read it out of order. I picked up a later Penny book and liked it well enough to go back and start from the beginning.

This book feels like a debut. The writing is good, but not quite as sure-handed as more recent books (which makes sense). It introduces us to Armand Gamache, a seasoned detective if ever there was one, and to the cast of characters in Three Pines.

By the time I finished it the first time around, I’d become a legit Gamache fan-girl. This series is one of the few that I’m so enamored with that I pre-order forthcoming titles. ‘Nuff said.

To be honest, I could have picked multiple books by Lisa Jewell. She’s my favorite thriller writer, and many of her books use close-knit communities to set up mysteries in which I constantly change my mind about who I can trust. Exactly what I love about domestic noir!

In this book, the setting is a picturesque village in the Surrey Hills, where teenage parents Tallulah and Zach head out on a date to the local pub and never come home. There are two aspects of the seemingly idyllic community that really sucked me in: a mysterious mansion just outside the village known as Dark Place and a boarding school with its own long-kept secrets. Jewell uses the setting not only to heighten the sense of mystery–there are secret tunnels, woods where bad things happen, clues in old paintings, all the good stuff!–but also to explore themes of class, sexuality, and… show more.

At first blush, Ten “Tenzing” Norbu seems to be just another jaded ex-cop turned cynical private investigator with a string of broken promises and a bitter ex. But Ten’s not your average ex-cop. For one thing, he’s also an ex-Buddhist monk. For another, his sidekick is a Persian cat named Tank. A chance encounter with a woman on the run from a cult leads to his first private case when the woman turns up dead. Ten’s reliance on his religious beliefs as he investigates her murder adds depth and meaning to this fast-paced mystery. Imperfect, but trying, Ten wormed his way into my heart over the course of the book.

I have read and loved all of Ann Cleeves’ books about Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, set on the Scottish Shetland Islands. Red Bones is about two feuding families with generations of secrets between them, who are somehow involved in at least two murders. Islands, particularly those that are small and/or remote, foster communities that are incredibly tight-knit by necessity – often your survival entirely depends on one another. That has always made me wonder what lengths such communities might go to in order to survive; what secrets they might have to keep, what lies they might have to tell if something terrible happens that could jeopardise their whole existence. My time living on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Outer Hebrides very much inspired The Blackhouse, but it was in no small part also inspired by the wild Shetland Islands as described in Cleeves’ wonderful stories.