100 Books Like Bad Move

As a reader of mysteries and thrillers, I always look for intriguing characters, a great storyline, and something special. Not all books in the genre have these. This one does. The secret element is that it’s extremely charming. I love the relationship between the protagonist, Myron, and his best friend, the wealthy Win. For instance, they are both TV trivia nuts of classic TV shows from the ‘60s and forward.

Additionally, Win is very much not what he seems. This other side is intriguing and adds depth to the character. In Coban’s book, I rooted for Myron (I didn’t always agree with his choices) but was on his side the whole time.

This is the first book in the remarkably excellent series set in Ireland during The Troubles about a Catholic police officer, Sean Duffy, who lives in Belfast. I love the way McKinty writes this character; it’s funny and very Irish and such a pleasure to read.

The mystery in this first book involves a corpse with its hand cut off, and then another person’s hand thrown into a car with them. There’s also some Italian opera mixed in for atmosphere. It’s a juicy murder mystery that I couldn’t put down.

This was one of the first books I read in which the older women were not just the main characters but were the kick-butt heroes of the day.

I read it while in the middle of a messy draft of my own book and felt inspired to stop diluting the age-related experience of my own main character.

I loved this story because it opens your mind to another kind of justice, but justice nonetheless. 

Vicki Nelson is an ex-cop turned private investigator. One evening, she witnesses a horrific murder that is out of this world. 

She consults with her former partner, Mike Celluci. However, a knight in not-so-shiny armor appears, Henry Fitzroy. Henry is a vampire who will prove to be the best ally they could have hoped for. And there, in the dark streets of Toronto, a new kind of justice had been born. 

George Smiley is a most unlikely hero for a spy thriller. He’s old, tired, and just wants to be left with his books and his research. He wears big, comical glasses, and his wife, the lovely Lady Anne, refers to him as her “Toad.” He doesn’t look like a spy at all.

George is old-school—careful, meticulous, and precise. In this book, we are gifted with an insider's view of a gimlet mind as he sifts through the traces of all that’s been buried, in pursuit, not only of the truth but of the foul trick that has turned the British Secret Service inside out. I came to deeply respect George’s integrity, his ability to self-evaluate, and see clearly not only the strategies and ploys of his enemy but also his own flaws and weaknesses.

In this cozy mystery Mable and Violet are fast friends and have odd adventures. I think everyone needs a partner in crime, so to speak. This is a series; each book has a different theme, which I like. This story is set in a theatre, a one-act play competition in small town Saskatchewan, Canada. From my experience in little theatre odd things do happen. Like in my writing, this story has humour, intrigue, and enduring friendship. The added bonus, a theatre critic who has it coming. I like figuring out who had the biggest axe to grind and what motives each character is hiding.

Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope, while driving home during a blizzard, becomes disorientated and loses her way on the backcountry roads of Northumberland in England. Off the beaten track she finds a car abandoned, one door open, and a baby in the back seat. I can’t imagine anything more alarming. Where are the mother and father? When she takes the child with her, Vera realizes she is mere feet from her father’s ancestral home. Hector was the black sheep of the Stanhope Clan. The place is lit up and welcoming but Vera’s cousin was not expecting her, but invited guests for a dinner party and certainly not a baby. Then to discover the child’s mother murdered on their grounds. I fell in love with Vera in the first book and want to be just like her when I grow up. I like the police procedural rhythm of these books and… show more.

I read this book by James Clavell when I was just out of high school. And while I had always been interested in history and biographies, I'd never really read historical fiction. It blew me away. I became lost in the book. 

The heart of the story lies in the intense rivalry between two opium traders, Dirk Straun and Tyler Brock, who come to dominate Britain’s newfound control over Hong Kong in the early nineteenth century. Their shared history as powder monkeys on a British ship during the battle of Trafalgar,  where a seven-year-old Dirk Straun was mercilessly whipped by the older Tyler Brock, sets the stage for a lifelong conflict that shapes the course of the narrative. 

While the rivalry between Straun and Brock is the driving force of the plot, the true essence of the story lies in the exploration of the integration of Chinese and British culture… show more.

This book was written not as a work of history, but contemporary non-fiction by two reporters covering one of Canada’s highest-profile murder cases of the 1970s, the killing of Christine Demeter, a former model married to flamboyant Toronto businessman and Hungarian immigrant Peter Demeter. By Canadian standards, the authors had unprecedented access to lawyers and others involved in the 1974 trial of Demeter for the murder of his wife and benefited from evidence and a cast of characters straight out of a best-selling crime novel. Demeter was found guilty and while serving his sentence he was convicted of instigating two separate plots to have people kidnapped and murdered. By Persons Unknown broke new ground in Canadian true crime writing.   

When you write historical novels, you have to place your characters in a certain real setting. Hounsom’s book let me step right onto the streets and into the houses of Toronto in 1810. As well as wonderful information on the way people lived at the time, Hounsom includes maps and drawings of Toronto and its important buildings. For example, I actually found a drawing of the house that my novel’s main character lived in.