Books like Cliff Diver — picked by fans

I was excited to read another book with fascinating characters and of course, a great K-9. Nickless’ characters are well-developed and very believable. Her fictional K-9 Clyde is captivating and while he’s technically retired, still has the skillset to help his handler, Sydney Parnell.

I love the character arc with Sydney in each book as she recovers from the traumas of serving in the military. I also love that Nickless had Sydney return home to Denver to work as a railroad police special agent. This is a law enforcement job that I haven’t seen in any other book. I appreciated the thrilling storyline and how Nickless created strong tension that ratcheted up to a suspenseful ending. 

I picked up this book from the shelf of a holiday cottage and was hooked immediately. I love books which interweave personal human stories with big events.

The ordinary loves and lives of the people of Pompeii are unfolding as the mountain above them begins to behave strangely. Of course, we, the readers, know the disaster that is about to occur, which only adds to the suspense. Unputdownable.

Another crime book that takes you places you never thought you’d venture into. Fesperman creates a sympathetic protagonist Vlado Petric. Vlado, a former homicide detective in Sarajevo, lives in exile but is recruited to return to the place of horrors that have haunted his life. His assignment: help capture an aging Nazi collaborator who has become a war profiteer, surrounded by a sympathetic population who will protect him with their lives. The story is dark and filled with suspense and dread. The Balkans were and are a very dangerous place. As a writer Fesperman creates suspense and fear in a very different place with very different people.

Pelecanos creates a helluva crime story set in Washington, DC. Not so different of a place, right? Ah, but there is the backdrop of the Martin Luther King riots in 1968 and the cops are overwhelmed. Derek Strange is a Black rookie cop and with a white detective Frank Vaughan goes on a manhunt for his brother’s killer. The combination of the two is a great dynamic. Derek’s pretty sure he knows who the drug dealer is who killed his brother and won’t be put off by the riots. Trying to find the killer in the chaos is gripping. A lot of grit in here and tension. This is one story you

The protagonist, Joe Picket, is a game warden in Wyoming. I learned so much about his job stopping poachers, and about life in rural Wyoming, but the story is also so well written with a warmth and humanity that some crime novels lack.

I loved that he was a father with two young children, not earning very much in the career he loves, with all the stresses of modern life and a difficult and often dangerous job.

There are 26 books in the series, the most recent came out in March 2026.

I was intrigued by the premise of this series, an ex-cop who is a heroin addict trying to solve the murder of his best friend even while he’s eaten alive by the need for his next fix.

The world of Cal Rogan is grim and gritty, with occasional glimpses of a better, brighter life in the shape of his young daughter, who lives with his ex-wife. I enjoyed meeting the street people Cal knows and relies on, as well as former colleagues that he’s let down too many times with lies and broken promises.

Taking an even darker turn, the behaviour of some members of the Vancouver Police Department was disturbing, to say the least. The plot kept me guessing and wrong-footed me several times, and I thoroughly enjoyed the character development and description of modern-day Vancouver.

There are seven books (so far) waiting for you to discover.

There are two main characters in this 9-book series, a traditional US detective and his girlfriend, who is a graphologist – someone who studies handwriting.

I’ve learned a lot about the techniques used to determine whether a signature on a will is a forgery, and that several medical insurance fraud cases have been prosecuted in the US based on the testimony of a graphologist. In the case cited, someone had filled out a number of forms all in one go, with the $ claims put in later – but because the forms had all been signed at the same time, there was ‘drift’ as the signatures migrated in the direction of the writer.

I tried this at home, and it’s true. Try writing your name over and over again in a list: if you’re right-handed, you’ll drift to the right side of the margin, and if you’re left-handed, towards the… show more.

A seriously underrated series set in Australia with the mysterious Heller, who is from a Nordic country (although it takes several books to find out more about him), and a young woman who becomes part of his chaotic family of misfits who run a security business, possibly with ties to the government and international espionage.

Every personal detail of Heller is grudgingly given, which makes it so much more intriguing. Each book is a standalone, but each adds more to the overall picture.

I wish I could tell you what happened to this talented author, but she disappeared mysteriously over ten years ago and has never written another book since. A true-life mystery.

I love this book because it was one of the first scholarly works to consider what is now commonly accepted among researchers of US-Mexican relations: that borders are fluid.

This thin volume gives a concise history of the US-Mexico border. It treats border zones as distinct, rather than peripheral, spaces in the nation. In the case of the United States and Mexico, the border region is neither American nor Mexican but rather an amalgamation of both. The implicit statement being, of course, that treating the physical border between the two countries as rigid and categorical is fallacious.

I also love this book because it debunks the almost predetermined ways in which borders are viewed. Instead of prescribed lines on a map that make perfect sense on the ground, borders are moving (sometimes literally, often times figuratively), and fashioned by various demographic, economic, political, and military factors. A foundational book for… show more.

This hooked me by page two–and I knew right away it was a classic! It’s got specific humor (including plenty of rad mid-1970s references) and characters who are immediately endearing. There are plenty of fascinating cultural and sociological details that I soaked up like a sponge. And it perfectly navigates changing tones, including poignant, hilarious and comforting. That's no easy feat!