16 books like Highway 59

As an ex-pat Oklahoma who writes crime fiction, I’ve long been enamored of my homeboy, the great noir-ist Jim Thomson, whose best novel this is. Like most of Thompson’s work, this is set in Texas, not Oklahoma, but as in all my choices, the world he evokes is indistinguishable, the one from the other.

Lou Ford, the main character, is the kind of guy who makes you want to sleep with both eyes open. A psychotic, small-town Deputy Sheriff, Ford openly mocks the idea of justice; he is a purely malign force, a glad-handing menace who rules his petty fiefdom with the wisdom of Josef Goebbels and the kind-heartedness of Charles Manson. Ford’s first-person narration reads like it’s been scrawled in Magic Marker on the walls of a men’s room in hell. No one did nihilism better than Jim Thomson.

This coverage of the crime wave of the Overton gang who burgled, pimped, and committed various crimes up and down I-35 is nonfiction, but hard to believe at times.

The story paints vivid time in Austin with a supporting cast of colorful lawyers, madams, and even UT Tower sniper Charles Whitman. Jesse Sublett, author, musician, painter, journalist, and photographer is basically as close as Austin has to royalty and portrays the events in a rock n’ roll style.

I’d also recommend Jesse’s fiction series staring bass player and skip tracer Martin Fender.

My favorite book from Texas’ greatest living writer.

I’ve been lucky enough to go from fan to friend of Joe’s and realized a lot of the experiences of his youth ended up in this novel of a young boy in 1958 who discovers a box of love letters that unravel the mystery of a murder that happened decades ago in his small town, but some folks still want silent.

Lansdale captures a time of drive-in movies, early civil rights, and gearing up for times of change. Part Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, King’s The Body (a.k.a. Stand By Me), and all Lansdale.

Crumley used his PI Milo Milodragovich to look at the state “with more guns than cows” in all its colorful insanity.

The search for a runaway pool shark wife puts Milo in the middle of plot involving firearms, drugs, and crimes in various forms as Crumley draws from two of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler and Warren Zevon.

I got to know Jim near the end of his life and see his broad, loving, cynical personality, and the feelings of his birth state when I read this.

Kellye Garrett takes the fake world of reality TV, hashtags, and influencers to circle her reluctant protagonist, Lena Scott. Life and actions are judged to only have value if you have video of it to get clicks. That’s the message that stuck with me.

Lena Scott and her sister Desiree may share a father, but they could not be more different. That father is hip-hop mogul Mel Pierce known in the business as Murder Mel. The family members are in and out of each other’s lives with the same kinds of drama a blue-collar family would have; there are just bigger price tags. Lena steps out and opts for a modest life away from the family fortune and her father’s name.

When Desiree suddenly dies as a fallen from grace celebrity who appears to have overdosed, Lena doesn’t buy it. Even two years without speaking doesn’t erase how well she… show more.

This book is so much more than a police procedural set in the South with a Black female detective as its protagonist. Snowden writes Southern Gothic stories with all the wonderful emotional obsessions and foreboding suspense that anchor that genre. As the child of a serial killer, Detective Raven Burns witnessed many of her father’s deadly attacks, including the murder of Raven’s mother. Haunted by her past, Raven struggles with both real life and personal demons to secure justice for victims in the present.

A friend recommended this book to try to get me out of a reading slump, and man, this book had me crawling out fast. I was impressed with just a darn good story that had me from the start.

Not only did this story contain the elements of suspense and romance that I enjoy, but the intricate lives of the characters had me rooting and emotional, wanting more of them by the end. I would highly recommend this to other readers.

When I heard an interview on NPR with Rachel Howzell Hall, I knew she needed to be on my list. Rachel is very prolific, so the book was a tough choice. Since I tend to prefer standalones over series, I picked They All Fall Down, a novel of suspense and a delicious take on the locked room mystery—in this case a luxurious remote private island in Mexico. Each of the seven guests has a dark past they would like to hide, including the narrator, Miriam Macy. Soon, the stranded guests are being outed and dispatched. Who will be next? We’re rooting for Miriam as her tale gradually unrolls. 

I spent my twenties watching in horror as Texas and then-Governor Bush executed more prisoners than any other governor in modern American history, only to be replaced by Gov. Rick Perry who executed even more. In Chammah’s deeply researched non-fiction exploration of the death penalty, he focuses on Texas, “the epicenter of capital punishment.” I better understood our justice system through his intimate focus on the individuals impacted by the larger system. And the book gave me a measure of hope, too—the societal problems that seem intractable can actually improve over time, through the work of many.

There’s a special pleasure in reading novels set in the place you’ve long lived, and there’s also a special pleasure—at least for me!—in diving into subcultures with strong and strange beliefs. Owen Egerton delivers on both in Hollow. Set in the Austin far removed from tech money and hip new restaurants, Hollow follows Oliver Bonds, a former religious studies professor whose life unraveled after the death of his young son. Oliver finds distraction in Hollow Earth theory and the idea a whole different world lies inside the one we currently occupy. Hollow broke my heart in the best sort of way with its exploration of grief, regret, and the lengths we go to in order to survive being human.