9 Books Like A Case of Mice and Murder

Beautiful setting of Oxford, England, as a woman tries to find out what happened to her missing sister years ago. Female protagonist works as a dictionary linguist and word clues begin to appear about her sister's mysterious vanishing. The book is wonderfully filled with unique words, many old but all new to me. It was delightful page by page to find new words. The resolution of the missing sister is satisfying and the characters all believable. This book was this author's 1st work of fiction and it was splendid.

A modern-day epistolary novel, told in emails, texts, newspaper articles and such, the book starts with a family's reluctant move back to the wife's dying hometown. Both the family and the town are struggling to survive and find their place. Not what you expect in the opening of a hilarious, delightful, uplifting journey into remembering that passion carries us far, is it? I laughed out loud at times. I couldn't read it fast enough. Perhaps an unusual choice of "best book" for a crime writer? There are crimes and justice. And hilarity and redemption. A really good read.

Matt Murphy spent 26 years in the Orange County, California District Attorney's office, mostly prosecuting homicides. He also loves to surf and calls colleagues "dude." Anyone who watches 20/20 or ABC crime segments has seen him -- a tall, lean, intense and good-humored man. His stories of famous California cases range from con man/killer Dirty John Meehan to serial killer Rodney Alcala. But he also talks about himself and the toll his intense focus on a difficult job took. He authentically reveals his emotional reaction to cases and second-guesses some of the personal choices he made that allowed him to successfully prosecute wily, deadly killers. He's a good storyteller -- and does he have some stories to tell! One of the best accounts I've read of the life of a true crime-fighter and those he worked with.

An historical telling of the last year of the American Civil War. Who knew there was a sophisticated Southern spy network that wreaked havoc throughout northern cities? That assassin John Wilkes Booth was a only one cog in that network but still "a dreadful man"? That young Tad Lincoln had a cleft palate? So much happened that last year of the war that I didn't know, and kudos to Ellsworth for sharing "The Lost Cause" reworking of history. And of course, there's that dear, great man, Abraham Lincoln. I feel I know the president much better after reading this history, and that's a value that can't be quantified.

First published in 1961, this memoir may be the best book ever written about aviation by someone who was both a pilot and a terrific writer. 

I took the liberty of using this title as the heading for one of the chapters in my own book as a tribute to Gann. His visceral accounts of flying the early airliners in America during the 1930s in the burgeoning years of commercial aviation are literally heart-stopping. 

We take so much for granted in this modern age of airline flying but this wonderful book will forever change your perspective of the risks and challenges that went before.  

Originally released in 1967, a new edition of this book was published by Daredevil in 2021. 

Amy Johnson’s story has great personal resonance for me and I was very honoured to write a preface for the book. With less than a hundred hours in her logbook, Amy set out to Australia to break the world record for the fastest time in 1930 and what would become one of the most outstanding solo achievements in history. 

My own flight to Australia in 2015/16 re-tracing Amy’s route was done in homage.  

This is about one of our most brilliant female aviators. 

Largely forgotten today, the Irish Lady Heath, one of our first female Olympians and the first woman in Britain to hold a commercial pilot’s licence, was also the first person to fly solo from Cape Town to England in 1928. 

Her flight was the inspiration for my first expedition up Africa in 2013, about which we made a documentary screened by the BBC, and this book is the moving story of Mary Heath’s exceptional but ultimately tragic life.

I loved reading about these very early pioneers who today are largely forgotten or never known, notably Frank McLean, who met the Wright brothers, and went on to cut an irresistibly romantic, dare-devil figure. 

He became an overnight celebrity when he flew a flimsy seaplane between the towers of Tower Bridge in London in 1912. After the First World War, he was one of the first pilots flying to Africa and down the Nile in what would become one of the early air routes for Imperial Airways in the 1930s.  

Also, Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce fame, who was tragically killed in a freak incident at the Bournemouth air display in 1910, the first Brit to be killed in a flying accident. 

This is a lively history of the first 200 years of British women in the sky. 

Given that women were largely blocked by a hostile male establishment from participating in commercial and military aviation for most of the 20th century, this is a riveting account of the unconventional women who defied gravity and everything else to get airborne. Marvellous stuff!