Books like An Extravagant Death — picked by fans

Child’s Jack Reacher is a classic knight errant, strong, resourceful, and courageous who has headlined dozens of books. But this book stands out because, in the finale, he squares off with a formidable opponent with a hook for a hand.

Reacher struggles to stay conscious during this standoff because he has a woodworking nail stuck in his head, shrapnel from a shotgun blast, that is inexorably shutting down his brain and body. I will remember that passage for quite some time.  

I love the setting and atmosphere of the book, first and foremost. New York City in 1932, just before the end of Prohibition, so there are still bootleggers and gangsters and all that jazz (literally).

I love the characters of Nick and Nora Charles – witty, sophisticated, glamorous, and living a life I can only dream of (literally – I was born 50 years too late!). While it has its humorous elements, this is a hardboiled detective story.

I love the contrast between Nick and Nora and the underworld characters that they encounter, as well as the strong undertone of cynicism that runs through it. It feels more like real life than many other detective stories, where everything is resolved by the end. 

This is how good Mosley is: I couldn’t escape the feeling that I knew his protagonist the whole time I was reading this. I swear I had met the guy somewhere. I walked those same Brooklyn streets, and Mosley’s portrait of them was strong enough and real enough to make me miss the place, even though Brooklyn is overrun with lawyers and stock brokers these days.

And Mosley’s secondary characters are just as real, and if you screw up, you just might meet some of them. One last thing: when Mosley writes about race, he does it in lowercase. That way, the story sneaks under your defenses and hits you much harder than if it was all in caps. Walter Mosley is not just a writer; he’s an artist.

You know what I like about Donald Strachey? His boyfriend. I’m kidding—Strachey’s fine.

He’s a smart, tough detective in the hard-boiled tradition so of course I like him, but do you ever think way more of someone because they had the good taste to pick the partner they did? Timothy Callahan is a Jesuit-educated political aide, former Peace Corps volunteer and one of those characters who gets called a “moral centre” because they are one.

I was half in love with him before he (accurately) dissed Mother Teresa but I adored him after that. I came to the Strachey books for canny, realistic and never twee gay detective fiction but I’ve stayed for Timmy. He’s a soothing, reaffirming, hilarious wonder and you never know—he might smack-talk Gandhi next.

As a writer of crime thrillers, I also read a TON of crime thrillers. I also work in national security and law enforcement, and so finding a crime thriller that rings true is one of my great joys.

Don Winslow is an acknowledged master of crime fiction, one of the greatest of all time. But this book flies under the radar because it’s not a standalone novel or a chapter in one of his longer crime saga series. Rather, it’s a collection of six knock-down, drag-out crime novellas. Some of the stories follow familiar Winslow characters or take place in settings he’s already explored, but through a new lens. Every story is different, with characters and settings I loved, all imbued with Winslow’s gift for verisimilitude and wry turns of phrase. 

It’s a can’t-miss.

One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Set in Paris in the 1920s, this mystery has everything I want in an escapist read: a suave detective, his sharpshooting, bad-ass girlfriend, a twisty, unpredictable plot, and fabulous, quirky characters.

Many are based on icons of the era: Josephine Baker, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and all the usual Midnight in Paris celebrities. I first read this in my teens, and I still reread it for the madcap humor and view of Paris in the 1920s written by someone who was there.

The fourth book in Lindsay Davis’ magnificent series of detective novels featuring Marcus Didius Falco, The Iron Hand of Mars is set in 71CE, several years after the events of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

Although much of the action takes place in the aftermath of the Batavian Revolt in 69–70CE, Davis both captures daily life in the Roman cities in Germany, but also how the events of 9CE continued to haunt Roman Germany – the Roman empire – even a generation later. 

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.

I love Agatha Christie, and I love her fussy, brilliant detective, Hercule Poirot. This novel has all the hallmarks of a classic Christie—grand English home, mysterious death, greedy relatives, dark shenanigans, with the added bonus of Bob the terrier whose penchant for a certain red rubber ball is a key part of the mystery. 

What I love about a murder mystery is joining the dots, connecting all the different elements together.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is all about connections. Whether it is the aliens who’ve been secretly living on Earth for millions of years; or the ghost of the murder victim trying to leave a message on his sister’s phone; or Richard, the book’s hero, attempting, with the "help" of the ever-unreliable Dirk, to figure out what is going on here and why.

I was simply lost in the convolutions of a plot that also involves time travel and the highly vexing question of how a sofa came to be impossibly stuck on a landing. It’s ALL connected, and the solution makes sense of (nearly) everything.