Books like Bloody Murder — picked by fans

Haycraft was an American commentator and this survey of the history of crime writing up to the Second World War is soundly written and sympathetic. Interestingly, he believed that the locked room puzzle was played out and that authors should avoid it, whereas this type of mystery has enjoyed a significant revival in recent years. Predicting how crime writing will evolve in the future is fraught with danger! Inevitably, Haycraft’s focus was mainly on American and British crime fiction. The limited number of translated mysteries in those days meant that the global reach of crime writing, and the achievements of authors whose first language is not English, has long been under-estimated. Only now is this problem being addressed.   

This is a fun book. The late Bob Adey’s passion for locked-room puzzles and his extraordinary breadth of reading shines through. After a discursive history of this type of detective story, he lists over two thousand novels and stories and the ‘impossible crime’ elements within them. A separate section listing all the solutions is not only enlightening but highly entertaining. A recent updated edition by Brian Skupin evidences the enduring appeal of ‘miraculous mysteries.’ 

During my twenties, I supplemented my understanding of crime writers past and present by studying the essays, bibliographies, and authors’ comments in this weighty tome. It’s a first-rate reference book, packed with information. Reilly was responsible for the first two editions and I was delighted to be asked to contribute essays myself to the third and fourth editions.

I dreamed for many years of writing a book about crime fiction. I’m primarily a crime novelist, but so was Julian Symons, and the experience of writing fiction is invaluable when discussing other writers and understanding what they were trying to do. I approached Oxford University Press, with a view to producing a Companion about the genre, comprising essays by writers including myself. This led to a fruitful meeting with an OUP editor and novelist, Michael Cox, but the project was stillborn when his American colleagues had commissioned just such a book, to be edited by Rosemary Herbert. Rosemary invited me to contribute twenty-odd essays to her Companion, and I found the work of my fellow contributors (including Symons) a delight to read.

Once in a while, every author reads a book they wish they had written. This book is the one for me.

Jannie, a once-bestselling-now-struggling crime writer, unable to lend authenticity to her plots and voice, decides to carry out a multi-million-dollar heist to give a fact-based and realistic account. However, to accomplish her plan, she teams up with her partner to recruit men from the wrong side of town. Together the team members scout targets and rehearse the various escape routes. Jannie’s plan is to call off the make-believe caper a day before the heist. But…the hustlers she’s recruited won’t take orders from her any longer, not when over a million dollars are within touching distance. 

In the words of Sanders himself: “Crime never felt so good!” 

Combining a murder mystery with a colorful sci-fi universe that’s full of magic? Yes, please. Odd couple Lieutenant Iari and Ambassador Gaer (who, don’t let the title fool you, is actually an alien spy) have to team up to discover why a retired battle-mecha killed someone—an occurrence that should be impossible. The rapport between Iari and Gaer is a delight, and the plot quickly unfolds from a mere murder to something far more sinister. I absolutely love the world that Eason creates—it has the scale of a video game-like Mass Effect while simultaneously creating compelling characters. 

I never thought I’d cheer for a crippled torturer, but somehow Abercrombie makes me do it.

The characters in The Blade Itself feel raw and jagged, like real people rather than fantasy archetypes. What I loved most was how no one is truly heroic—everyone’s broken, desperate, or scheming, yet still magnetic. The dialogue crackles with wit, and the shifting perspectives kept me hooked.

It’s grimdark, yes, but never bleak for the sake of it. Instead, it reveals how ugly and fascinating people can be when survival and ambition collide.

Immediately following the events of Gideon the Ninth, the reader is thrust into the wreckage of Harrow just as lost as she is, both reader and character engaged in a mind-bending fight to unravel the mystery of who she is now and what she will become.

This is a sequel, and can’t be read without first reading Gideon the Ninth. And it is impossible to fully articulate this book’s place on this list without robbing the reader of the experience found in Harrow’s self-discovery. But I had to include it anyway; this book made me crazy (positive), it made me despair (as in I will never write something this cool), and it made me reflect on all the ways that queer people compartmentalize ourselves, the ways we perform normativity and queerness, and how mind-bending it can be when we try to sort the pieces of ourselves out into… show more.

The first book in the Pampered Pets series features Caro Lamont, who trains humans how to interact with their pets, even if the humans believe her to be training the pets. One of Caro’s clients is murdered, and she becomes a suspect. The story is creative and witty, with a lot of information on why our four-legged friends behave as they do. Caro and my protagonist Lily Dreyfus are self-sufficient and determined women. They will ferret out the killer, no matter the risks to themselves. At the end of the day, their four-legged friends help them deal with grief and fear by providing love and companionship.

Agent of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the spectacularly well-dressed protagonist tasked with saving the world (again) in an alternate 1912 Cairo. This award-winning novel awed me with its detail and invention. What I loved most was the way the world building relegated the British Empire to relative unimportance. Come to think of it, I loved the Ministry library almost as much.