69 Books Like A Question of Guilt

This was the first book I’ve read from the point of view of an investigative journalist, and I really enjoyed this angle. And I really loved the character of Ingrid, a very strong female lead who will stop at nothing to get to the truth. Ingrid delves deeper into the story of 8-year-old Kelly Doherty’s murder, believing that there's a chance the man convicted is innocent. But she's soon warned off by someone who’ll do anything to keep the past buried.   

Claire's writing style is entertaining and engaging. This atmospheric story is told from multiple viewpoints, which keeps the pages turning quickly. It's dark and chilling with a plot that builds and builds and kept me guessing until the climactic ending that I totally didn’t see coming. 

Windsor Horne Lockwood III, otherwise known as Win, is Myron Bolitar’s psychotic sidekick in Coben’s long-running series. Win is pure antihero.

He and Myron have been best friends since they roomed together at college. Win is from ‘old money’ and doesn’t try to hide it, he runs Lock-Horne Investments & Security, and is an expert in martial arts and weapons. Other than Myron and Myron’s business partner, Esperanza, and maybe half a dozen others, he has no emotional attachment to humans.

Despite his psychopathy, Win is a very funny character, and his loyalty to his few friends is absolute. Win is the second book on the list in which the sidekick has gotten a book all to themselves and it was a joy to read.

Jane Casey’s books started my lifelong love affair with the crime fiction genre. This one, in particular, the first in the Detective Maeve Kerrigan series, will always hold a special place in my heart. I fell in love with Maeve immediately: she’s brave, strong, true to herself, wonderfully flawed, and totally relatable.

This book is a fantastic introduction to the series and the first time I’ve become invested in the life of a fictional character since Harry Potter. The cast of believable, leap-off-the-page characters brings the story to life and stayed with me for months after I put the book down. The writing is delightfully sharp, deliciously entertaining, and utterly devourable. I challenge you to read this without getting hooked on the entire series!

I bought this book in Hatchard’s bookshop because I liked the cover, and because I like stories about Hell. A great choice on my part—this wonderful crime/fantasy novel features a detective called Thomas Fool in the most lawless land there can be. Thomas has to investigate a series of grisly murders which threaten the Devil’s domain; and to make his police procedural story work Unsworth has to invent a whole new mythology of Hell in which murder is even possible. The writing is stunningly evocative and the logic of the world building is remarkable even if it is,  ultimately, bonkers. This book and its sequel, The Devil’s Evidence, are the noirest of noirs and are completely unputdownable. 

Brian McGilloway’s novel is told in the first person from the perspective of a grieving mother who tries to pick through the lies and secrets to uncover what happened to her only child. On her journey she uncovers the brutal truth; everybody lies. The book takes a realistic look at Dora Condron’s emotional descent into a bleak world where she comes to believe that no one will tell the truth. I like most of all that it is crime novel, a mystery, and a family drama that is told from the single perspective. The mother’s introspection about her failings as a parent really hits home when we consider what our own last words might have been to a loved one who walks out the door and never walks back in. 

I seem to be addicted to long-running series with British detectives, though not all written by British authors, and A Clubbable Woman is the first book in this twenty-one-book series by Reginald Hill.

When I began to write fiction and worked on creating Corelli and Parker, Hill was one of the authors I looked to for inspiration. Although his Yorkshire detectives, the abrupt and rude Detective Superintendent Andrew "Andy" Dalziel and the educated, calm, and well-mannered Detective Sergeant Peter Pascoe, did not fit my vision for my own characters, I enjoyed their antics and read the entire series. The books are fun and challenging and this is a great beginning.

This is an original and timely twist on the classic mismatched-partners story.

An extremely well-crafted police procedural, the central mystery is a missing person investigation. As the first in a series, it expertly sets up a compelling cast of supporting characters, with a well-written, likable, and relatable central protagonist.

The unique selling point is the pairing of DCS Kat Frank with an advanced AI detective that appears in holographic form. The book is set just a few years from now and is in principal entirely possible.

AIDE Lock is very much a work in progress and it’s no spoiler to say that despite Frank’s misgivings, she learns as much from the artificial officer as it learns from her. There are more books planned and I look forward to reading them.

I really enjoyed the entire 87th Precinct series, wherein Ed McBain creates the American police procedural genre.

Cop Hater, the first in the series, is hard-hitting, fast-paced, filled with complex characters, and captures the essence of a cop’s soul while giving the reader a wonderful glimpse into the world of criminal investigations.

I discovered Kirschman through her non-fiction—a book called I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know—when I was working on my first mystery.

Later I discovered she also writes a darned good story herself. Like this one, featuring Dot Meyerhoff, newly hired police psychologist. Dot’s job? Help the police cope better with their stress—those daily dangers, risks, uglinesses.

First client—Ben Gomez, a rookie who just encountered his first corpse. He strikes Dot as a little too sensitive. When Ben becomes a corpse himself, it looks like another cop suicide. Shouldn’t Dot have seen this coming? But she didn’t.

The secondary theme is significant and well handled: the prevalence of police suicide. I learned a lot. Hint: it’s a cozy, not a police procedural.

I first read Wambaugh long before I was a police detective and, truth to be told, linking policing to crime writing left my mind for many years.

What drew me to Wambaugh and to this book in particular is the way in which the characters are gritty and flawed. Unlike the Larger-Than-Life characters that were the norm back in the day, Spermwhale Wallen, Calvin Potts, and the rest of the night watch platoon are damaged souls.

The Choirboys is an excellent (fictionalized) account of how the daily trauma of police work can impact a person.