Here are 100 books that Among the Shadows fans have personally recommended if you like
Among the Shadows.
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I’ve been writing about the Mafia since the 1990s, when my cover story, The Mob on Wall Street, appeared in BusinessWeek magazine. My first book, Born to Steal, was an exposé on the Mafia on Wall Street. Since then, I’ve been following the subject closely, and my most recent book, on the Crazy Eddie scam, is consistent with that theme.
Most people know this book due to its film adaptation, with Robert Mitchum in the title role. To me, it is a splendid book because, like all great fiction, it tells the truth. More than a great many nonfiction books, it tells the truth about the actual nature of organized crime.
It strips away the phony glamour and describes the actual nature of the mob—treacherous, violent, and unforgiving. And the dialogue is amazing! What you see in this book is not the Mafia but Irish gangsters, and they are tired blue-collar men who are just scraping by. That is what organized crime is all about today, just as it was in the 1970s.
Eddie Coyle is a small-time punk with a big-time problem - who to sell out to avoid being sent up again. Eddie works for Jimmy Scalisi, supplying him with guns for a couple of bank jobs. But a cop named Foley is onto Eddie, and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. These and others make up the bunch of hoods, gunmen, thieves, and executioners who are wheeling, dealing, chasing, and stealing in the underworld of Eddie Coyle.
The first female police detective in Acapulco, Emilia Cruz, dives into an ocean of secrets and lies when she is forced to lead the investigation into her own lieutenant's murder.
Caught between the powerful head of the police union and resentful colleagues, Emilia becomes a pawn in a game of…
All of the books I’ve listed above have flawed characters. Characters that deal with emotional and/or moral dilemmas. The plots: murder, missing children, or runaway husbands are secondary to me. What I look for in a book and what I write about in my Cole and Callahan series, are characters with flaws. People who struggle with truth. Cops or investigators that hide or skew evidence because the truth would cause more harm than good. It’s the moral dilemma I want. The angst we all feel when we are faced with a particularly painful decision. That’s what real life is and that’s what brings a book and a character to life.
Gone Baby Gone is book 4 in Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series. As private detectives, Gennaro and Kenzie are a top-notch investigative team and the story itself is one that will suck you in from the start. It keeps you guessing with its mix of characters, reliable, and unreliable, upfront and in the shadows. It’s my kind of story and one I often referred to while writing my book. Beyond the story of a missing girl, Lehane uses the relationship between Gennaro and Kenzie as a subplot. The friction, the conflict, the barriers in their personal life continue to give the reader angst even after the facts are uncovered. Gone Baby Gone is a suspense story that doesn’t just solve a crime, but also takes the reader into the lives of the investigators, questioning their morality, their decisions and ultimately asking the reader, is the truth always worth…
Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda Cready.
Despite extensive news coverage and dogged investigation into her abduction, the police have uncovered nothing. And as the Indian summer fades, Amanda McCready stays gone - vanished so completely that she seems never to have existed.
Then a second child disappears.
Confronted with a police force seething with lethal secrets, Kenzie and Gennaro soon discover that those who go looking for the missing may not come back alive.
All of the books I’ve listed above have flawed characters. Characters that deal with emotional and/or moral dilemmas. The plots: murder, missing children, or runaway husbands are secondary to me. What I look for in a book and what I write about in my Cole and Callahan series, are characters with flaws. People who struggle with truth. Cops or investigators that hide or skew evidence because the truth would cause more harm than good. It’s the moral dilemma I want. The angst we all feel when we are faced with a particularly painful decision. That’s what real life is and that’s what brings a book and a character to life.
Cormoran Strike and his business partner, Robin Ellacott, are searching for a missing writer who has penned a scathing novel, revealing his friend's most tightly held secrets. Any one of them would be happy to take him out. Ellacott and Strike are hired by his wife to find him. They do, brutally murdered. Besides facing a plethora of possible murderers, Strike and Ellacott face that there’s more than a working relationship evolving between them. But with Stike’s recent break-up and Ellacott’s live-in boyfriend, feelings are buried. After they solve their twisted case, I’m on to the next book in the series to see how Cormoran and Robin will move forward together. I love a good mystery and I love a relationship plagued with obstacles. The Silkworm delivers on both.
'Teems with sly humour, witty asides and intelligence ... A pleasure to read' TIMES
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Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.
But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost…
With plot elements inspired by presidential elections in both the US and Mexico, Barracuda Bay follows Acapulco’s first female police detective, Emilia Cruz, as she investigates the murder of the mayor’s sister—only to become a fugitive hunted by killers disguised as cops in Washington, DC. The stakes couldn’t be higher…
When I finally accepted that I’m analytical, it was surprisingly liberating. I think that’s why I enjoy trying to figure out a story and its characters and what will happen next. Because of this, it’s delightful when a story genuinely surprises me. I especially appreciate magical elements that defy reality. I’m also a motivational speaker and filmmaker, two powerful story-telling mediums, so I love books that inspire me in some way, challenge my perspectives, and leave me thinking about them for days. When a book is so well written that I can turn off my brain and lose myself in the story, it’s a fabulous escape for me.
I love an intriguing premise and an unexpected twist. This book promised both, and it really delivered!
I think we are all curious about what goes on behind the closed doors of our neighbors, though the truth is usually incredibly mundane…especially when compared to this story! From the first page to the last, I couldn’t put down this psychological thriller.
Because I love a tale of great suspense, I find myself growing impatient whenever a story starts to peter out without any satisfying resolution. That was not the case with this book. It delivered great, well-developed characters and an unexpected ending. Bravo!
‘OMG!!! SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!!!… The most heart-racing book I’ve read in a long time, if not ever!!! It had me hook, line and sinker from the first page and I could not put it down!!!… Clear your day because it is truly unputdownable… What an absolute twist!!!… If you read one book in your life, make sure it is this!!!!’ Bookworm86, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sometimes, the most perfect families are hiding the most terrible secrets. How well do you know the people next door…?
Everybody wants to live on Hogarth Street, the pretty, tree-lined avenue with its white houses. The new…
All of the books I’ve listed above have flawed characters. Characters that deal with emotional and/or moral dilemmas. The plots: murder, missing children, or runaway husbands are secondary to me. What I look for in a book and what I write about in my Cole and Callahan series, are characters with flaws. People who struggle with truth. Cops or investigators that hide or skew evidence because the truth would cause more harm than good. It’s the moral dilemma I want. The angst we all feel when we are faced with a particularly painful decision. That’s what real life is and that’s what brings a book and a character to life.
Not A Happy Family is a Domestic Suspense novel. The Mertons have everything, money, a beautiful home, and plenty of vacations. So why, after Easter dinner with their three children are they found dead? The kids are distraught. Or are they? What childhood secrets do each of them carry and is one of them murderously vindictive? I come from a big family and always enjoy reading about dysfunctional families. Luckily, my own family was only semi-dysfunctional for the most part. Nothing I needed to kill my parents over.
I retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, as a detective assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, but I’ve always been a writer at heart and an avid reader. I graduated from California State University in Long Beach, CA, with a major in Film. I am the author of six crime fiction books, three of which involve retired detective turned PI Frank Marr. This trilogy was critically acclaimed.
Platinga is a sergeant with the San Francisco police department. I love his book because so many of the stories are similar to ones that I experienced as a cop. It brought back some good and some not-so-good memories.
You don’t have to be a cop or a former cop to love the read, though. It’s not only a great reference book for crime writers who want to learn and add authenticity to what they’re writing but also a wonderful read for those who want to take a wild ride inside a cop’s head during the course of their tour of duty.
"The new bible for crime writers." ―The Wall Street Journal
How does it feel to be in a high-speed car chase? What is it like to shoot someone? What do cops really think about the citizens they serve? Nearly everyone has wondered what it's like to be a police officer, but no civilian really understands what happens on the job. 400 Things Cops Know shows police work on the inside, from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat―a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying, all within the course of an eight-hour shift. Written by…
I retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, as a detective assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, but I’ve always been a writer at heart and an avid reader. I graduated from California State University in Long Beach, CA, with a major in Film. I am the author of six crime fiction books, three of which involve retired detective turned PI Frank Marr. This trilogy was critically acclaimed.
This pick is a classic from an author who played a huge part in growing the police procedural genre. Wambaugh was also a detective sergeant but with the LAPD. He paved the way for other cops, like me, who want to write books.
All of Wambaugh’s books are wonderful reads, but this is one I remember most because I read it as a teenager, and it blew me away. It delves into some of the tougher aspects of being a cop, though, and the negative side of police culture.
Meet the Los Angeles blues—a new breed of cop. From the baby-faced rookies to hashmark heroes, they are besieged men, dealing daily with a world coming apart. Hunting killers, quelling gang wars, fighting corruption, they risk death every day . . . every night.
Joseph Wambaugh was a damn good cop and LAPD detective. For fifteen years he prowled the streets, solved murders, took his lumps. Now he’s the hard-hitting, tough-talking bestselling writer who tells the brutal, true stories of the men who risk their lives every time a siren screams.
I retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, as a detective assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, but I’ve always been a writer at heart and an avid reader. I graduated from California State University in Long Beach, CA, with a major in Film. I am the author of six crime fiction books, three of which involve retired detective turned PI Frank Marr. This trilogy was critically acclaimed.
I’ve always been a big fan of police procedurals and courtroom drama books, and I am even bigger a fan of books with great characterizations. This book has all that.
Lissa Marie Redmond is a former cold case homicide detective for the Buffalo Police Department. Her protagonist, Lauren Riley, is also a retired cold case homicide detective, and this book is the first in a series with her. I loved this book because it has a lot of memorable courtroom scenes with nice dialogue, and I was surprised by the ending, which is not easy to do.
Lauren's job as a cold case homicide detective is her life. And life just got complicated.
Lauren Riley is an accomplished detective who has always been on the opposite side of the courtroom from slick defense attorney Frank Violanti. Now he's begging to hire her as a private investigator to help clear his client of a brutal murder. At first Lauren refuses, wanting nothing to do with the media circus surrounding the case―until she meets the eighteen-year-old suspect.
To keep an innocent teen from life in prison, Lauren must unravel the conflicting evidence and changing stories to get at the…
I’m a long-time mystery fan. In my teen years, I cut my teeth on short YA mysteries presented as puzzles or brain teasers and later graduated to Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, P. D. James, Martha Grimes, and others. My favorites are mysteries that combine the challenge of the puzzle, a healthy dose of suspense, a chance to bond with interesting characters, and the pull of evocative language, be it plain or poetic.
Agatha Christie isn’t called “the Queen of Crime” for nothing. She invented many of the tropes that have characterized the mystery genre since, plus contributed two of the best-known detectives of all time. But this book features neither of them. Instead, it drops Charles Hayward, fiancé of a murdered millionaire’s granddaughter, into the midst of a family that is happy on the outside and is anything but on the inside.
I put this book at the top of Christie’s many fine works because the mystery has such a chilling resolution. Very few mystery authors, I suspect, would go to the place she did with this work.
A new Agatha Christie thriller, described by her as "one of my best."
The Leonides were one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That was until the head of the household, Aristide, was murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection.
Suspicion naturally falls on the old man's young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiance of the late millionare's granddaughter...
I have loved stories all my life, not only to read but to write. I have a particular passion for mysteries and will soon be releasing the sixth book in my Meg Sheppard Mystery Series. I read for enjoyment and prefer fast-paced stories with compelling characters. I’ve selected these books because they’re great reads and I hope you find them as entertaining as I did!
When a street brawl abroad turns deadly, Danny Maik faces a charge of manslaughter, but when evidence emerges that he may have planned the victim's murder, he is looking at the death penalty. His only hope is reaching out to those he can trust back in the UK.
In Norfolk, Maik's replacement is trying to resurrect his career after a catastrophic error caused injury to a fellow officer. DCI Jejeune should be monitoring his new charge's progress closely, but he is distracted by Danny's plight. Others are watching, though, and they are disturbed by what they're seeing.
