85 Books Like Clean

This book is one of my all-time favorites, because even though I knew it was fiction, it felt like nonfiction as I was reading it. It was that authentic, and that alive. I truly felt like I was reading an actual history book about an event from my own world. 

The narrative structure was also amazing, telling the entire story through interviews with survivors of the zombie war, and I was riveted by those stories. They showed me what it was like to face that zombie horror, which made me desperate to know what happened, how they survived, and how they managed. Although I was reading, it felt like I was watching actual people tell their tales.

I loved how Scalzi put the reader inside the head of his narrator and showed you his world as he saw it. Scalzi uses very little description, but I never felt that I was missing out or that the setting was weak. It was the opposite, really. I got hints and off-hand comments from the narrator that were great hooks to keep me reading, and I kept learning about this world and these characters all the way til the end.

It wasn’t until my second read that I even realized Scalzi did something absolutely brilliant. The “locked in” people of this world use robot bodies in the real world, but also have an online digital world. Scalzi describes the digital world in more detail, showing that Chris sees it as more real than the “real world.”

Grabenstein also writes for kids, and it shows. His books are rich and fun, and this one just put me right in the middle of a quirky seaside tourist town. I could feel the sun on my face and wanted to go on all the rides and eat the food from all the snack vendors. He actually made me hungry on more than one occasion. 

He crafted this playful world and overlaid a murder on top of it, using the contrasts of light and dark to show all the sides of this setting, and its citizens. I learned all about John Ceepak, the detective the rookie cop narrator works with, but I never felt like I was getting John’s life story or dossier. It was just Danny sharing his admiration and interest in a partner he wished he could be like. I felt like I knew Danny and that made… show more.

I’ve been a reader of Jennifer Crusie for a while, so I was delighted to find that she’d moved into murder mysteries. Then, when I read this, I thought: Liz Danger and my Poppy would really get on well—so naturally I loved it! I like the creation of a small town that isn’t the normal sweet-as-pie cozy place, and the slow-burn romance is handled deftly. Just quirky enough but not too quirky.

I like Liz and her ambivalence about the town and her erratic family. Because it’s a collaboration, the two points of view (Liz and cop Vince Cooper) are distinctly different, which I really enjoyed. I immediately went on to read the rest of the series, which is the highest praise I can give!

I don’t think Connelly’s intention was to write horror, but his visceral description of the corpses and the minutia of murder in this novel made my stomach churn. An unpleasant experience, yes, but it’s vivid and effective writing. Harry Bosch is a detective with weakness for a specific type of woman, and of course he gets mixed up with Julia, a hot tomato who’s new to the force, and of course she messes up his investigation into the bones. You might want to kick Bosch in the caboose for not thinking more lucidly, but eventually he manages to outsmart his villains.

This book is so original. We follow an old man, a retired serial killer, on his journey to read his own newly published true crime story. He stumbles on the book while doing his security rounds and can't resist picking it up, and over the next week finds himself more and more obsessed with reading it, growing fears that he will be discovered after twenty years, and with the author, his only surviving victim- who was a child at the time and is now an adult twenty years later. 

I enjoyed this book, it's original in the sense that the killer is an ordinary, cranky old bastard that no one likes. He's just a guy, who doesn't stand out, hasn't been good at anything all his life, a mediocre man that falls into the crowd. The only thing he's ever been able to succeed at was being The Nothing Man,… show more.

I picked up this book because I loved the cover (who says we don’t choose books by their covers?) and shortly thereafter found myself completely immersed in a 17th-century English Restoration mystery. I would visit that era in my time machine provided it’s fully stocked with soap and hand sanitizer (this time period being the one during which the Great Plague took place). 

Main character Lucy Campion is a chambermaid in the home of a London magistrate. Her days are filled with the drudgery of servant duties—that is, until a murder claims the life of a servant in the household and someone Lucy holds dear is accused of the crime. Knowing that person can’t possibly be the killer, Lucy sets out to find out whodunit. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I’ll stop there. 

I learned more about 1660s England reading this book than I ever did… show more.

In my view, a great murder mystery should have a lot of possibilities, and science fiction just adds deeper layers of intrigue, and this is what The City and The City has in spades – literal layers and intrigue.

Here, two cities exist in the same place, yet the citizens of each one must ignore the citizens of the other. It is a crime to notice the citizens of the other city. When a murder occurs and our detective investigates, he only has jurisdiction in one city.

But what really blew my mind about this book was that, though it is science fiction, there is no physical or scientific reason that the cities are separate and occupy the same place. The division is only in the minds of the inhabitants!

Moe Prager is a thinking and feeling man’s PI. Sure, Coleman, gives the twisty-turny plots and leaves you wondering who dunnit but, for me, that’s not what makes him great. His characters speak to you about what’s going on with people but not in a hit-you-over-the-head manner. Prager is real and feels like a guy you would know and like.

In this Prager story, Moe is determined to find out who and what someone is mistreating people he loves. He relentlessly pursues the case, sacrificing his own safety and well-being. Along the way, we meet his Holocaust-surviving neighbor and other characters that make the book outstandingly different.

Message—Friends make life worth living even when it means risking your own life

Another cautionary story. This story shows that the Nazi movement is growing worldwide and that governments need to keep these organizations under wraps before allowing them to carry out their own agendas. 

When a mistake causes an international incident during a US Presidential visit to Norway, Detective Harry Hole is placed out of sight in the Federal Police Department, until matters settle. Unable to sit still, Harry investigates a neo-Nazi group and comes across someone practicing with an exotic rifle that would only be used to assassinate someone. Now he must identify both the target and the killer.