Here are 49 books that Inspector Alan Grant fans have personally recommended once you finish the Inspector Alan Grant series.
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My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
I love English boarding school mysteries, and this one is told with a witty, humorous voice that kept me laughing. Throw in a lost Shakespeare play, an intriguing plot, and a lot of charm and humor, and this one had me hooked. Edmund Crispin was known for his erudite wit and huge vocabulary. I learned quite a few new words here.
The characters were fun and quirky, and the plucky teenage girl who’s smarter than the adults makes this book one of my favorite mysteries of the “golden age.”
As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse - discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best.
Castrevenford school is preparing for Speech Day and English professor and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen is called upon to present the prizes. However, the night before the big day, strange events take place that leave two members of staff dead. The Headmaster turns to Professor Fen to investigate the murders.
While disentangling the facts of the case, Mr Fen is forced to deal with student love affairs, a kidnapping and a lost Shakespearean manuscript.…
My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Set in Paris in the 1920s, this mystery has everything I want in an escapist read: a suave detective, his sharpshooting, bad-ass girlfriend, a twisty, unpredictable plot, and fabulous, quirky characters.
Many are based on icons of the era: Josephine Baker, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and all the usual Midnight in Paris celebrities. I first read this in my teens, and I still reread it for the madcap humor and view of Paris in the 1920s written by someone who was there.
"It has the delicious irresponsibility of a Wodehouse plot. . . . It's one of the funniest books we've read in a long time. It contains a great deal of shrewd satire."—The New York Times Multimillionaire and philanthropist Hugo Weiss is known in every capital of the Western world as a munificent patron of the arts. When Weiss suddenly vanishes while on a visit to Paris, his disappearance sets the stage for this uncommonly witty and urbane mystery. Homer Evans, an intrepid American detective, turns his keen intellect and remarkable intuition toward solving the puzzle of the financier's disappearance. Assisted…
James V. Irving was born and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, majoring in English. He holds a law degree from the College of William and Mary. After completing his undergraduate studies at UVA, Mr. Irving spent two years employed as a private detective in Northern Virginia, where he pursued wayward spouses, located skips, investigated insurance claims, and handled criminal investigations. In his early years as a lawyer, he practiced criminal law, which, along with his investigative experience and trial work, informs this fictional account of Joth Proctor. Mr. Irving and his wife, Cindy, live in Vienna, Virginia.
Billy Budd, the handsome sailor, is the proverbial Everyman, and I was drawn to him in the same way his shipmates were. Melville may have been the first author to apply the classical tragic formula to a simple man without wealth, power, or social standing.
Budd, beloved and respected by all, advances by his virtues and falls due to his single shortcoming. A man whose strengths are balanced by his weaknesses, he is a relatable protagonist who forces me to confront the unsettling truth that our most careful plans and aspirations crumble when fate intervenes.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
Though best-known for his epic masterpiece Moby-Dick, Herman Melville also left a body of short stories arguably unmatched in American fiction. In the sorrowful tragedy of Billy Budd,Sailor; the controlled rage of Benito Cereno; and the tantalizing enigma of Bartleby, the Scrivener; Melville reveals himself as a singular storyteller of tremendous range and compelling power. In these stories, Melville cuts to the heart of race, class, capitalism, and globalism in America, deftly navigating political and social issues that resonate as clearly in our time as they did in Melville's. Also…
The list reflects my interest in history and my own recollections of the days before the current era of mass tourism and online globalisation. I confess to a feeling of painful nostalgia for a time when we all had a very different worldview, and these books are all of that period. They feature temporal grief for an age that has passed. They are all highly readable books by writers at the top of their game.
Bombed day and night for thirty days, the city became the epicentre of a firestorm. Nonfiction about the bombing of Hamburg, told from both points of view, it reads like the best fiction and never just as dull history.
This book made me aware of the terrible destruction the Allies wrought on nearly every city and town in Germany, though at great cost also to the courageous airmen who wreaked the havoc. Full of facts and strong writing, it was the inspiration for my writing.
In the summer of 1943, British and American bombers launched an attack on the German city of Hamburg that was unlike anything the world had ever seen. For ten days they pounded the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs, with the intention of erasing it entirely from the map. The fires they created were so huge they burned for a month and were visible for 200 miles.
The people of Hamburg had no time to understand what had hit them. As they emerged from their ruined cellars and air raid shelters, they were confronted with a unique vision of…
The list reflects my interest in history and my own recollections of the days before the current era of mass tourism and online globalisation. I confess to a feeling of painful nostalgia for a time when we all had a very different worldview, and these books are all of that period. They feature temporal grief for an age that has passed. They are all highly readable books by writers at the top of their game.
The best novel ever about WWI. I was there with them in the trenches and finally understood how the generals came to have the mentality that allowed the slaughter to continue.
Forester is a superb writer and grossly underrated. He is a model for any aspiring writer. I must have read it four times at least, and each time found some new aspect to enjoy.
The book John Kelly reads every time he gets a promotion to remind him of 'the perils of hubris, the pitfalls of patriotism and duty unaccompanied by critical thinking'
The most vivid, moving - and devastating - word-portrait of a World War One British commander ever written, here re-introduced by Max Hastings.
C.S. Forester's 1936 masterpiece follows Lt General Herbert Curzon, who fumbled a fortuitous early step on the path to glory in the Boer War. 1914 finds him an honourable, decent, brave and wholly unimaginative colonel. Survival through the early slaughters in which so many fellow-officers perished then brings…
I’ve always loved books where something in the past of the main storyline surges into its present, demanding that an old wrong be righted or an old mystery solved. It’s why my first degree was in Social and Political Sciences (Psychology major) instead of English Literature or Creative Writing: I knew that learning how to writewould be useless if I didn’t understand the things I wanted to write about. The role of the past in shaping our present – our behaviours, sense of self, relationships – is endlessly fascinating, and stories that unpick this are often the ones that surprise me the most with their insight into the human condition.
Vivid, surprising, and psychologically astute, The Wicked Girls stands out among a plethora of books with a similar premise.
There are no easy answers or pat solutions here. This is a book that asks interesting questions and offers a range of answers, through the characters, for readers to ponder. On the police procedural side, Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories treads a similar line, but Marwood’s protagonist is a journalist, which offers a less common ‘way in’ to the investigation along with a less familiar set of challenges. [If you love Children’s fiction, check out the phenomenal Diana Wynne Jones’ Eight Days of Luke to match this theme (then, if you love it, Charmed Life and Howl’s Moving Castle), plus Jenny Nimmo’s The Rinaldi Ring and Berlie Doherty’s White Peak Farm.]
“The suspense keeps the pages flying, but what sets this one apart is the palpable sense of onrushing doom.” —Stephen King, “The Best Books I Read This Year”
The Edgar Award-winning psychological thriller that asks the question: how well can you truly know anyone?
On a fateful summer morning in 1986, two eleven-year-old girls meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, journalist Kirsty Lindsay is reporting on a series of sickening attacks on young female tourists in a seaside vacation town when her investigation leads her…
I’ve always loved books where something in the past of the main storyline surges into its present, demanding that an old wrong be righted or an old mystery solved. It’s why my first degree was in Social and Political Sciences (Psychology major) instead of English Literature or Creative Writing: I knew that learning how to writewould be useless if I didn’t understand the things I wanted to write about. The role of the past in shaping our present – our behaviours, sense of self, relationships – is endlessly fascinating, and stories that unpick this are often the ones that surprise me the most with their insight into the human condition.
Written and set in the 1950s, this is the 4th in the Felse detective series.
Peters is more famous for the Cadfael mysteries, with their wonderful depiction of England at the time of the civil war between Stephen and Maud. However, the Cadfael books need to be read in order and the first is far more successful in the BBC adaptation.
Dated in some ways, and with prose that’s functional rather than beautiful, Peters has a brilliant eye for capturing a period. The clever trail of clues means it’s possible to work out the mystery so the reveal is satisfying and doesn’t cheat the reader.
If you like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (the 1974 film is dated but still brilliant), you’ll probably enjoy this too.
In a derelict seashore graveyard a mystery unfolds, a trail of violence in Maymouth's history which casts long shadows. Permission is granted to open the tombs of a loving couple, Jan and Morwenna Treverra, buried centuries ago and given touching epitaphs. But there are recent remains in there - buried long after the couple died - and the whole community, young and old, is involved in this case.
My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
This book introduces one of my favorite sleuths, Albert Campion. But what’s fun is that Allingham never tells the story from Campion’s point of view.
We only see him from the outside, as others do. This adds to the fun and intrigue. And there’s lots of that. In a spooky old English country mansion full of strangers, the host is murdered, and the rest of the crew goes on a twisty, scary roller-coaster ride driven by an assortment of secrets and criminal schemes—which we must slowly figure out.
This one had me on the edge of my chair, wondering what outrageous turn the plot would take next.
Classic Crime from the Golden Age, the first in the Albert Campion Series. Margery Allingham is J.K. Rowling's favourite Golden Age author.
George Abbershaw is set for a social weekend at Black Dudley manor, hosted by Wyatt Petrie and his elderly uncle Colonel Combe, who enjoys the company of Bright Young Things. With Meggie Oliphant in attendance, George looks forward to the chance of getting closer to the girl he's set his heart on. But when murder spoils the party, the group soon find out that not only is there a killer in their midst, but the house is under…
My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
I love the setting of this mystery: New Zealand during World War II. Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealander, but most of her well-known mysteries are set in England. This one has fascinating Māori characters as well as the usual blustery English ones.
Add a Nazi spy and our intrepid Inspector Roderick Alleyn in disguise, a complex plot, plus a truly surprising ending, and you’ve got a recipe for exactly the kind of mystery I like to escape into.
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand's North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.
It was a horrible death - Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.
Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted - if he wasn't a spy himself...
I am a literary critic and novelist, now serving as a Dean at Drexel University. I’ve written several modernized spin-offs of Jane Austen’s novels and several, including a YA novel, dealing with Shakespeare. What Alice Knew is my only thriller/mystery—and it was a painstaking labor of love to write. (I also wrote a nonfiction book on Hitchcock.) I am a great fan of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels, and the idea for What Alice Knew grew out of my wanting to put the bedridden Alice James (a life-long invalid) in the position of Wolfe, with her brothers Henry and William serving as two versions of the legman, Archie Goodwin.
Set in academia, this is English prof Carolyne Heilbrun’s most famous mystery under her pseudonym of Amanda Cross. Harvard English Department stands in for Columbia, where Heilbrun spent most of her career and weathered many indignities. I remember briefly sitting in on Heilbrun’s course on Henry James when in grad school and sensing her prickliness.
When Janet Mandelbaum is made the first woman professor at Harvard's English Department, the men are not happy. They are unhappier still when her tea is spiked and she is found drunk on the floor of the women's room. With a little time, Janet's dear friend and colleague Kate Fansler could track down the culprit, but time is running out....
