40 books like Maisie Dobbs

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Linda Fairstein and really enjoy her crime/mystery series. This is the 20th in the series featuring Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper. There’s nothing like a strong female lead to make me like a book. This one, in particular, is filled with good characters. I especially liked that Linda took us into the tunnels of Rockefeller University for a nail-biting chase scene.

Like all good authors, she was given permission to explore the area so that she could bring it to life in her novel. The book has a great sense of place. What’s better than a mystery in New York City?

The most supernatural of this list, this book has occasional short chapters (usually just a paragraph or two) by the angel who is shepherding a dying man toward death.

These little interludes give the reader flickers of insight into the author’s vision of dying without anything like proselytizing. The engrossing overarching story is one of friends and family in a small Southern town and one woman’s struggle with her identity and her religion, again without judgment.

There are no easy answers – this book is real and heartwarming at the same time that it is heartbreaking. 

This one gets all the way to the end before the mysterious creeps in, where it felt completely natural.

I find Trafford’s novels both engrossing and enlightening—genre-merging legal/psychological thrillers that are also thoughtful and literary. I loved the books prior to this one, but this is the one that first introduces a little supernatural healing that was surprising and then . . . good. Intriguing. He carries it forward into the second book of the Dark River series.

The bridge in this book is an actual bridge over an actual river (the Mississippi) connecting Missouri and Illinois at St. Louis. The story is fiction, involving a body that washed up on the Missouri side of the river, which sets the stage for all that follows.

Going into it, I have to say that the cohort of talking animals was a bit much for a realist like me.

But I kept reading as the animals inhabit the dreams of a young neuroscientist who is dealing with personal issues while trying to complete her graduate studies. I realized that the animals became what people couldn’t be for her at this precise time. Maybe they were figments of her imagination. It doesn’t matter in the end. They enlightened her struggles and got her through.

By the time I finished reading the book, I looked at them the way I look at talking animals in really good children’s books: they do the work, say the things, and be the “people” that human characters couldn’t manage nearly as well. 

For me, there’s something extra compelling about a crime novel set in Los Angeles. I can’t remember why I picked up this first book in the Elouise (Lou) Norton series, but I’m glad I did.

In the first few pages, Lou is called out to the scene of an apparent suicide that may have connections to her own sister’s long-ago disappearance, which instantly intrigued me. I loved getting to follow fierce, tough Lou around the city as she investigated her current case, broke in her newbie partner, and also tried to figure out, once and for all, what really happened to her sister.

I can’t get enough of quirky, indefatigable teen sleuth Stevie Bell. She’s determined to solve a decades-old cold case, but must also navigate social awkwardness, anxiety, and people who literally want her dead.

I enjoyed how this book flip-flopped between the present-day narrative and the past. My friend and I got to see Maureen Johnson give a talk at a nearby bookstore, and we loved it; she’s basically a stand-up comedian. 

I love a New England mystery, especially one that includes recipes.

Katherine Hall Page fills the bill with her twenty-six delightful Faith Fairchild mysteries. Faith is a high-end New York City caterer who falls in love and marries a minister from a New England village. Will she be bored? Can love conquer all?

It turns out that this sleepy New England town has murders aplenty, but luckily, Faith is on the scene. I have tried her recipes, and they are wonderful!

A friend told me that John Banville is an amazing writer and storyteller; the book Snow didn’t disappoint. It’s a cozy mystery, meaning it’s always good to have a list of the characters handy, and it is set in Ireland.

Although the darker story involves sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and homophobia, I found the book beautifully written and the characters complex and carefully crafted. It might have been a little graphic for me in the beginning, but that didn’t spoil the book.

Another of my favorite authors, Erdrich, also has a big social and environmental justice theme throughout her works. There’s a delightful premise—a ghost haunts a bookstore in Minneapolis, and a mystery must be solved!—but it also takes on very serious subjects.

Set in 2019-2020, it covers the race riots, pandemic stress, and social justice issues. One thing I love is a book that has a seriousness of purpose but is still truly joyful and fun to read.  

Amanda Quick writes a variety of fiction, all of which include romance—romantic suspense, historical romance, and historical mysteries.

This is the start (you guessed it, right?) of a series set in 1930s California at an exclusive resort enjoyed by Hollywood stars. The heroine sleuth, a rookie reporter, hopes to get a scoop on a new leading man from an actress, but instead finds her dead in a swimming pool.

With the handsome owner of the hotel, she investigates, and finds that this glamorous paradise hides dark and dangerous secrets.