Books like A Gambling Man — picked by fans

Did this book give birth to hardboiled literature? No, but I feel it mothered and fathered it. 

Did this book—when filmed in 1941—give rise to film noir? I would say yes or “oui.”

This book lives on in libraries and bookstores, in minds and memories, on screens big and small, as a cultural masterpiece. But please don’t get me wrong about masterpiece. Hammett’s existential story of antiheroic private detective Sam Spade wriggling out of death as he fends off the cagey but crazed pursuers of a worthless “jeweled” bird breathes more deeply, more compellingly every time I re-read it. Through the book, I face the dark—and find the gloom almost charming. 

Blends psychological thriller, historical fiction, and detective mystery, set in New York City in 1896.

Journalist John Schuyler Moore and psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, aided by a young Theodore Roosevelt, investigate brutal murders that shock the city. Carr’s meticulous research brings Gilded Age New York vividly to life, from opulent drawing rooms to grim tenements.

The novel explores the roots of criminal profiling and human darkness, reflecting techniques I use in my own book's character’s investigations, including incorporating real historical figures for authenticity.

Disfigured and jobless after a fire, Timothy Wilde takes a job with the newly formed NYPD. He is assigned to the Sixth Ward, right on the border of the Five Points, a ward notorious for the desperately poor who live there and the rampant crime. One night he finds a young girl running through the street in a nightgown soaked with blood. She tells an unbelievable story of bodies buried in a nearby woods. Wilde investigates and soon finds himself a target of the city’s wealthy, several of whom are guilty of the most heinous of crimes but feel entitled to escape any accountability. Written in the slang of the times, it reads with the immediacy and plausibility of a memoir. I loved this book because it treats such serious issues: income inequality and the lack of accountability for the rich and powerful—even when engaged in child prostitution and murder.

This is a fun-filled mystery set in 1920s London. Cozies are not usually my thing, but I recently gave this a go as I am also writing a series in that exact time period and thought I’d see how Kinsey set about it. The historical beautifully captures the exuberance of the time period after World War I. Women have emerged from behind closed doors to interact on equal status as men, jazz music parades the pages with wild abandon, and the slang of the characters is spot on. The twists, turns, and action are blended in with the rich description to make this a delightful read.  

I was introduced to Ian Hamilton’s Ava Lee Novels when I was looking for a successful Canadian writer of “business fiction.” We never call it that, of course, it has to be written as an action-adventure, thriller, mystery, suspense novel, and Hamilton meets those criteria with Ava Lee as a tough-as-nails, lesbian Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant tracking down money stolen from business clients.

Her connections and family investments lead her to Hong Kong and Macau for a settling of accounts with local organized crime and Ava Lee knows that violence is the only negotiating tactic they understand.           

This book is the best model for me of what I wanted to write with my own Dale Hunter crime thriller series: a scientist, entrepreneur, or professional as the hero, not a private detective or law enforcement officer, and it’s set in Montreal with all the unique characteristics of that fascinating, multicultural historic city, including the bilingual dialogue unique to Montrealers that Reichs manages to untangle for readers to follow easily.

In addition, she tells the terrifying story of a forensic anthropologist helping to track down a serial killer who finds herself to be the next targeted victim. Déjà Dead is the novel that launched Tempe Brennan novels and the award-winning Bones TV series.      

Linwood Barclay is a fellow Canadian crime writer who imagines terrifying scenarios and takes stories through startling twists and turns of non-stop tension and suspense better than most.

Stephen King is a big fan of his writing in the style of horrifying domestic thrillers. In The Accident, we meet the humble hard-working neighbour with an eight-year-old daughter who discovers his wife killed in a car accident. The police claim she was the drunk driver who was responsible for it.

Garber has to believe the evidence but starts to explore what really happened and learns that his friends and neighbours are involved with dangerous criminals who are prepared to kill to protect their illegal activities. 

A gifted storyteller and USA Today bestselling author, Rick Mofina is a master of the thriller page-turner that starts with a family-friendly story and quickly accelerates through terrifying discoveries of the killer in the house, or next door, or rising from the character’s haunted past.

In Her Last Goodbye, we have the husband waking from some regrettable misbehavior and finding that his wife has not come home from her book club the previous night. He cannot answer his son’s question, “Where’s Mommy?” nor explain that he is the main suspect in his wife’s disappearance.

The mystery may never be explained either and a happy ending seems even more unlikely as he digs into the untold stories of their dark past.    

One thing I really like about this mystery novel is the way it is told from multiple points of view, which is a very unusual technique in mystery fiction. That’s one reason that it felt, to me, so much like a literary novel.

The first character is a brilliant, tortured artist named Margot, who is already dead at the start of the novel. The second character is Kate, an ex-cop turned P.I. who is hired to find Margot’s killer. 

Both women are compelling, interesting characters, but I especially liked the way Kenna renders the hero, Kate. She’s a single mom in recovery from a drug addiction. Her ex is a creep, and most of her old (male) cop colleagues are, too. Her struggle in solving the case felt completely real and human to me. And that’s the signature quality of literary fiction.

In this historical mystery set in the 1920s, the hero-narrator is likable and a bit goofy. He reminded me of Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves stories by PG Wodehouse, but Heathcliff is more intelligent. The mystery was complicated and puzzling, with added fun from the 1920s setting. It’s hard to investigate when phone lines are down and roads become impassable in poor weather. I've read the rest of the series, and they’re all pretty strong. Some move the action to Scotland or Egypt for extra 1920s travel excitement. They’re perfect reads when you want a light cozy with historical charm and some chuckles along the way.