Here are 16 books that Peculiar Crimes Unit fans have personally recommended once you finish the Peculiar Crimes Unit series.
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My fascination with crime fiction has come from reading about it. I have no idea how many novels I have read focused on baddies and the catching of them, but it’s numbering now in the many hundreds. I think the fact that a crime novel can incorporate elements of all other genres – horror, history, romance, the supernatural, etc. are what make them so appealing and add to the joy of writing them. Untangling the threads that make up a crime novel is very satisfying. Maybe in another reality, I would be a detective – I love that idea, but for now, in this bit of the multiverse, I’ll just carry on making them up.
Another Police Procedural series introduction. I love James Oswald’s writing and his characters are fascinating. There are some of the usual tropes in here but there is enough that is new and different to keep it fresh. I loved the fact that this had a horror element to it – I don’t read horror but enjoyed it in this case as a bit of seasoning. I think Edinburgh seems to be a great place to set a crime novel, and Oswald seems to know it well and it becomes a character in its own right I think.
Natural Causes is the first novel in the Detective Inspector McLean series, from Sunday Times best-selling author James Oswald.
A young girl's mutilated body is discovered in a sealed room. Her remains are carefully arranged, in what seems to have been a cruel and macabre ritual, which appears to have taken place over 60 years ago.
For newly appointed Edinburgh Detective Inspector Tony McLean this baffling cold case ought to be a low priority - but he is haunted by the young victim and her grisly death.
Meanwhile, the city is horrified by a series of bloody killings. Deaths for…
I’m a writer of cosy crimes and unapologetic in my love for the genre! There’s nothing better, in my opinion than a well-thumbed Agatha Christie or a foxed, old copy of Dorothy L Sayers. And it’s the role of the amateur sleuth that I love the best; that happy accident that brings a person with a sharp mind and perhaps a particular skill set together with a murderous villain, and we, the lucky reader, get to ride alongside them and work out the mystery for ourselves. Pour that tea, snuggle up and settle in with these five brilliant examples of amateur sleuths with just something a little different to offer…
I have to admit I saw the cover of this book and was smitten… then I discovered what makes this crime novel and its amateur sleuth a little bit different. Josephine Tey revisits the scene of a death at Charleston Farmhouse in 1915, and now, twenty years later, she realises that it might have been more sinister than ‘just’ an accident—and she, who was there at the time, might be implicated in the murder herself. Josephine Tey, as well as being the book’s protagonist, was also the real-life pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh, who wrote eight murder mysteries as Tey. That Upson has so cleverly fictionalised the real-life Tey is what makes this book, and the others in the series, so different—brilliantly so, in my opinion.
** Longlisted for the CWA Sapere Books Historial Dagger 2020 **
'Haunting . . . Superlative.' Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month
'A terrific novel.' A. N. Wilson
Summer, 1915: a young woman falls to her death at Charleston Farmhouse on the Sussex Downs. But was it an accident?
Twenty years later, Josephine Tey is faced with the accusation that it was murder, and that she was complicit in the crime. Can she clear her name and uncover the truth, exposing the darkest secrets of that apparently idyllic summer?
I’m a writer of cosy crimes and unapologetic in my love for the genre! There’s nothing better, in my opinion than a well-thumbed Agatha Christie or a foxed, old copy of Dorothy L Sayers. And it’s the role of the amateur sleuth that I love the best; that happy accident that brings a person with a sharp mind and perhaps a particular skill set together with a murderous villain, and we, the lucky reader, get to ride alongside them and work out the mystery for ourselves. Pour that tea, snuggle up and settle in with these five brilliant examples of amateur sleuths with just something a little different to offer…
Amateur sleuths tend to be drawn from the professional or upper classes—Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey, even my own Hon Cressida Fawcett—so it’s refreshing to solve cases with Lena Szarka, a Hungarian cleaner who has a clear moral compass and a way of finding out exactly what’s lurking in the dirty laundry—both literal and metaphorical. Headstrong, big of heart, and desperate to solve the death of her friend, Lena can spot a smudgy fingerprint at fifty paces. This book is the first in a limited series and well worth settling down with—just put a coaster under your mug and pick up your own biscuit crumbs, else Lena might have a word…
There are some crimes you can't sweep under the carpet...
Lena Szarka, a Hungarian cleaner working in London, knows all too well about cleaning up other people's messes. When her friend Timea disappears, she suspects one of her clients is to blame. However, the police don't share her suspicions and it is left to Lena to turn sleuth and find her friend.
Searching through their houses as she scrubs their floors, Lena desperately tries to find out what has happened. Only Cartwright, a police constable new to the job, believes that this will lead to the truth - and together…
Some people read mysteries to figure out who did it. Not me. I read mysteries (several a week) because they are full of contradictions, lies and truths, and humans making hard and sometimes stupid decisions. I lean toward mysteries that are literary in writing quality with quirky, complicated characters; a good sense of humor; and diverse settings. In my cozy Minnesota mystery series featuring Maya Skye, I am interested in the contradiction of a yoga teacher who is dedicated to seeking inner peace and yet drawn to mayhem. As Maya says, “We may try to follow the path, but life isn’t all Minnesota nice.”
Who doesn’t love a couple who bicker one moment and save each other’s lives the next? That defines married archeologists Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson, who fight off graverobbers and murderers while excavating the great tombs of Egypt in 1917. Amelia, who tells this story with wit and panache, is my kind of gal—she fights off villains with her ever-present sturdy umbrella. Dashing Radcliffe is devoted to her and exasperated by her antics. As the series has grown, so has the family. I adore the introduction of their son, Ramses, who is as brilliant, daring, and foolhardy as his parents.
At the start of this fourteenth adventure for Amelia, which continues the wartime theme begun in Lord of the Silent, it is New Year's Eve, 1917.
Risking winter storms and German torpedoes, the Emersons are heading for Egypt once again: Amelia, Emerson, their son Ramses and his wife Nefret. Emerson is counting on a long season of excavation without distractions but this proves to be a forlorn hope. Yet again they unearth a dead body in a looted tomb - not a mummified one though, this one is only too fresh, and it leads the clan on a search for…
Some people read mysteries to figure out who did it. Not me. I read mysteries (several a week) because they are full of contradictions, lies and truths, and humans making hard and sometimes stupid decisions. I lean toward mysteries that are literary in writing quality with quirky, complicated characters; a good sense of humor; and diverse settings. In my cozy Minnesota mystery series featuring Maya Skye, I am interested in the contradiction of a yoga teacher who is dedicated to seeking inner peace and yet drawn to mayhem. As Maya says, “We may try to follow the path, but life isn’t all Minnesota nice.”
Estelle Ryan writes mysteries set in France with a most unusual sleuth: autistic insurance investigator Dr. Genevieve Lenard. I am fascinated by how Lenard, a world-renowned expert on nonverbal communication, navigates both her personal and professional lives as she tracks down art thieves. She is a human lie detector who can’t bear to be touched and who, when upset, goes into autistic meltdowns in which she writes classical music in her head. I go to Ryan’s website to see the artwork and listen to the music featured in each book. Lenard also has a quirky team of sidekicks that I adore and that bring humanity to Lenard’s sheltered life: a former art thief, a hacker, a cop, and a tough guy.
Despite her initial disbelief, Doctor Genevieve Lenard discovers that she is the key that connects stolen works of art, ciphers and sinister threats.
Betrayed by the people who called themselves her friends, Genevieve throws herself into her insurance investigation job with autistic single-mindedness. When hacker Francine appears beaten and bloodied on her doorstep, begging for her help, Genevieve is forced to get past the hurt of her friends’ abandonment and team up with them to find the perpetrators.
Little does she know that it will take her on a journey through not one,…
It’s hard to pinpoint where my interest in cold cases began, but I remember reading about the Isdal Woman and being intrigued. She was found in Norway in 1970, badly burned, with the labels cut off her clothes. Police discovered fake identities and disguises in suitcases left at the railway station, but, to this day, have no idea who she was. I’m a member of several Facebook groups where people investigate cold cases, and I’m always amazed at how these clues can be put together so many years later. Or, in some cases, how some people go unnamed, or crimes unsolved despite all the resources at our fingertips.
I have to confess that I discovered these books after watching the TV series Department Q. As soon as I saw "Based on the books by Jussi Adler-Olsen," I knew I had to read them.
The books differ significantly from the TV show. For one thing, they are set in Copenhagen, not Scotland. But the dark humour and clever plots are still the same. In this, the first of the series, Carl Morck—who is recovering from an incident where two of his colleagues were shot—is made the head of Department Q, looking into cold cases.
His first case is the disappearance of a politician who we know is still alive, but no one—apart from Morck—is looking for him anymore, assuming he fell off a ferry.
Get to know the detective in charge of Copenhagen's coldest cases in the first electrifying Department Q mystery from New York Times bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen.
Carl Morck used to be one of Denmark's best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl-who didn't draw his weapon-blames himself. So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl's got only a stack of cold cases for company. His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at…
Half a century ago (hard to believe!), as a young newspaper reporter, I began every day at a police station, reading the log and talking to the watch commander. Occasionally, I was able to contact the detectives as well. For me, the way crimes and criminal investigations unfolded, and the personalities of the officers involved, were multi-dimensional and touched with surprising, and often unexpected, moments of humor. In my reading as well as my writing, I seek a balance between authenticity and a sense of the absurd, without which the experience of solving murders—real or fictional—could become emotionally crushing.
In Elizabethan England, Christmas revelries were presided over by a Lord of Misrule. During this season of legitimized misconduct, the brilliant Sir Francis Bacon requires surreptitious help in solving the murder of a fellow barrister in hopes of regaining the queen’s favor, from which he’s been ousted. It falls to his protégé, Thomas Clarady, to probe through disguises and earn the trust of a range of women, from the educated to the bawdy, in order to find the answers in time to prevent catastrophe. I love the Tudor period with all its riches, and this first entry in the Francis Bacon Mystery Series feels emotionally and historically credible.
Brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss -- and in danger. Bacon must put down his books and investigate the murder of a fellow barrister at Gray's Inn in order to regain the queen's favor. He recruits his unwanted protégé, Thomas Clarady, to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a wealthy privateer, Tom will gladly do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. The first clues point to a Catholic conspirator, but other motives for murder quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the victim's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall…
I grew up in Edinburgh and, from an early age, I heard the tale of Deacon Brodie. However, it was not until I was older—when a city official was charged with corruption—that I realised Brodie might just be the first ‘white collar’ criminal in Edinburgh. The more I found out, the more fascinating he became. Here was a man who everyonein the city saw as a wealthy, respectable, Councillor, yet—at the same time—he was a gambler who became a criminal to feed his habit, and so, when I moved to America, I decided to write my first crime novel based on Brodie’s life.
Lehane, one of my favourite authors, introduces the crime writer’s device of the duo, in his firstKenzie and Gennaro novel. For me, as in my own DCI Steel novels, the duo in writing can work to inform, or mislead, the reader and, if handled well, the reader doesn’t notice, seeing the interaction between characters as normal. Clichés abound in crime fiction, especially in lead characters, but Lehane avoids this with P.I. Patrick Kenzie, and his lifelong friend, Angie Gennaro. Given the area they inhabit, with its racial and gang tensions, added to the clients they have, clichés would seem unavoidable, but—once again—the lesson here is to write multi-faceted characters, which Kenzie and Gennaro emphatically are. They are flawed, but in Lehane’s hands, triumphantly human, and verybelievable.
Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are tough private investigators who know the blue-collar neighbourhoods and ghettos of Boston's Dorchester section as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: to uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential Statehouse documents. But finding Jenna proves easy compared to staying alive. The investigation escalates, uncovering a web of corruption extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of state government.
With slick, hip dialogue and a lyrical narrative pocked…
I’d always been a bookworm, but once I settled into a not-so-exciting career, I became a voracious reader of romance and mystery to escape the monotony of my day job. I’d frequent the library during my lunch breaks and devour the titles by my favorite authors. While this was entertainment, it was also educational. My love for writing became rekindled, and I started studying cozies and romantic mysteries with the goal to write what I most loved to read: fun, lighthearted mystery. I especially enjoy writing and reading humorous whodunits that are populated by quirky, loveable characters as reflected by my list. I hope you enjoy them too!
A CIA assassin who is forced to go undercover as a girly girl in the tiny bayou town of Sinful, Louisiana? From that premise alone, I knew this would be a fun read, and wow, does Jana DeLeon ever deliver in book one of her Miss Fortune Mystery series.
It’s a fabulous fish-out-of-water story filled with quirky characters of all ages, secrets that refuse to stay buried, and wrongs to be made right. There’s a splash of romance and plenty of laughs in this well-paced, sassy whodunit. My favorite kind of lighthearted mystery!
CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever-in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world's largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element. Posing as a former beauty queen turned librarian in a small bayou town seems worse than death to Fortune, but she's determined to fly below the radar until her boss finds the leak and puts the arms dealer out…
Alongside my early career as a children’s writer, I was a consultant to police forces about anti-corruption measures. It gave me a great look inside investigations…but my NDAs meant I couldn’t use any of that information in a mystery story. So, an amateur sleuth it had to be—but one who didn’t do stupid things instead of going to the police! Before that, I worked in children’s television, and I understand the power of the media to get people to talk. I brought those two sides of my work life together to create Poppy, my main character, and put her in Sydney, Australia, the city of my heart.
So, I might be favorably inclined towards archaeologists (I married one, just like Elly Griffith did). When I read the first of the Ruth Galloway series (local archaeologist in Britain), what I liked most was the authenticity of the archaeological sequences.
I’ve also worked with police as a consultant, and the police procedural parts of this series are solid. A great combination! I’m about to start the Ali Dawson series of Griffiths, and I have high hopes for that too—but read these first.
Discover the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries, one of the most popular crime series in Britain, with this beautiful special edition.
START THE JOURNEY HERE AND YOU WILL BE HOOKED
Dr Ruth Galloway is called in when a child's bones are discovered near the site of a prehistoric henge on the north Norfolk salt marshes. Are they the remains of a local girl who disappeared ten years earlier - or are the bones much older?
DCI Harry Nelson refuses to give up the hunt for the missing girl. Since she vanished, someone has been sending him bizarre anonymous notes about ritual…
