Books like Above Suspicion — picked by fans

To be honest, I could have completed this list with just Mary Stewart titles alone!

No one does lush, atmospheric suspense like she does. I discovered her books as a lonely teenager dreaming of escape, and her rich, immersive writing has inspired me not only to follow in her footsteps as an author but also to travel on “book pilgrimages” to find the settings of her wonderful stories.

And I don’t just mean ticking off a tourist spot with an Instagram selfie—I mean hours building an itinerary with guidebooks, Google Maps, and her novels to find the exact beach in southern Crete or the exact village in Provence that her heroines visited. 

What I love the most is the settings woven into the plot, so that the stories couldn’t have happened anywhere else, and so vivid that they are a character in their own right. In The Moonspinners, for… show more.

MacLean was a contemporary of Desmond Bagley, so a natural candidate when it came to following up potential leads in the Bagley vein. He’s better remembered than Bagley, possibly because quite a few of his books were made into films, but he always acknowledged Bagley as the superior writer.

This book is a good example of classic MacLean–raw action in a location that plays as much a part as any of the living characters–and his ability to create a claustrophobic atmosphere is simply terrific.

Can I make this list and not include a golden-age detective story set in a country house at Christmas? This one has all the ingredients required for an afternoon by the fire, looking out at the wintry weather—a locked room, an appealing detective, and a cast of people compelled, rather unwisely, to spend Christmas in each other’s company. "If you ask me, there very likely wouldn’t have been a murder at all if it hadn’t been for him getting ideas about peace and goodwill, and assembling all these highly uncongenial people under the same roof at the same time.” 

This recommendation is a little different from the others on my list. This “Titanic in Space” story really caught my imagination. It’s intense, romantic, and wildly believable. It does have romantic tension, but nothing steamy—the characters don’t have time or the safety for messing around. That is also another reason for my recommendation. It is an action and adventure story that includes great world-building and character interactions that make sense. I also love the author’s other books, but they aren’t blush-free. I do have to flip some pages to get past the steam. But it’s the Titanic! In space! Super fun read.

After his dismissal as German ambassador to Italy in 1938, Ulrich von Hassell kept a detailed diary, which he hid by burying it in his garden. He met frequently with resistance figures, including Stauffenberg. Designated foreign minister if the July plot succeeded, the Nazis placed him on trial. Despite the Nazis’ attempt to humiliate him by refusing to let him wear a belt or tie, and allowing him only a rumpled suit, Hassell cut a stylish figure with his pocket-handkerchief and his poised bearing. At one point, he calmly told the foaming judge: ‘Herr President, I have not lived sixty-two years to be told by you that I am a liar.’ He was hanged.

His diary is an essential primary source on the German opposition to Hitler.

Mildred Fish-Harnack was part of a wide circle of anti-Nazis that formed in the 1930s and continued to grow until it was broken by the Gestapo.

Brysac’s portrait of her is detailed and passionate. The fact that Mildred was American but gave up her life for a ‘better’ Germany never fails to move me. Mildred, her husband, and friends passed Nazi military secrets to the Americans and the Russians, and were to pay a heavy price. Virtually all were rounded up and killed.

Mildred, from Milwaukee, was the only American woman to be executed on Hitler’s personal orders. As the Nazis led her to the guillotine, she whispered, "And I loved Germany so much."

Those words act as an epitaph for all the people whose stories we told in our book: they hated the Nazis but loved Germany and wanted to save it from the horror unfolding under Hitler.

Ezekiel Farragut is a former university professor and current inmate at Falconer prison.

A drug addict and a murderer for killing his own brother during an argument, while incarcerated Farragut must wean himself from his addiction with methadone, and suffer visits from his profoundly disappointed wife. He is also involved romantically with a fellow prisoner—the captivating Jody, who all the guys want to screw.

When Jody successfully escapes, Farragut is left to contemplate how his own failures got him to this lonely place, and how to be a better man if he is ever able to leave it. This is where the grim, dreamlike beauty of Cheever’s best-known signature works shines through.

If you like this, also check out Blake Bailey’s biography of Cheever. The parallels between fact and fiction are fascinating.

We move up a generation to the next “classic,” an equally entertaining satire that now sets the American university against the British. Two professors exchange roles for an academic year, swapping not only courses but eventually also students, colleagues, and (spoiler alert!) spouses. You get to look at each place through the eyes of the other—starting with the sunny American campus (based on Berkeley) against the damp British one—which is as jarring as it is revealing. Lodge beautifully melds the academic, the intellectual, and the personal, so the story grips you personally even as it stimulates and entertains. I read this as a graduate student and somehow stayed in the business anyway!

In a genre full of stories of almost infinite variety, this is one that caught my eye.

A middle-aged female professor of mathematics goes on a quest with her cat to track down a former student who is the only one who can save their world from destruction. Sounds cozy, doesn’t it? Except for the world-ending part.

And the fact that Vellitt’s path lies straight through a dreamscape out of the Lovecraftian mythos in this critique/homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. But you don’t have to have read the latter to enjoy the journey.

Vellitt is a marvelous character, the world-building is brilliant and the cat is the perfect addition that helps set the tone for a new and different kind of quest fantasy.

Based on a simple question: “Can a man escape from a high-security prison cell using only his mind?” The Problem of Cell 13 is everyone’s favorite. The story offers a convincing answer and a mind-bending ending you just don’t see coming.

This collection of short stories demonstrates how someone can solve even the most impossible mysteries if one harnesses the formidable power of one’s mind. As I walk mentally side-by-side with Futrelle’s protagonist, Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, I find myself consistently unable to solve each puzzle first.

Unfortunately, Futrelle died young on the Titanic, taking several new stories down with him. At least we can still enjoy what he left behind, one of the greatest collections of mysteries you’ll find anywhere.