100 Books Like Death in a Deck Chair

Before I read Dorothy L. Sayers’ books, I’d only heard of Strong Poison and Gaudy Night, but as I read through the Lord Peter Wimsey series, I found a favorite 1920s mystery for me, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Wimsey is a veteran of the Great War with an unusual hobby: dead bodies. It might sound creepy, but it isn’t. He’s called on to fix the time of death of elderly General Fentiman, who “pegged it” on Armistice Day. I loved Lord Peter’s droll and self-deprecating attitude. People underestimate him because of his foppish exterior, but he sees what others miss. The investigation touches on PTSD—called shellshock then—in a way that feels timely to me, even after nearly a century. I loved the tour through aristocratic London with Lord Peter.

I’m always onboard for a mystery set in the exclusive circles of London society, and Freddy Pilkington-Soames, a young gentleman in 1920s London, is just the ticket when I want a fun, lighthearted read. Freddy’s mother ropes him into helping clear away a bothersome little matter, a dead body in her front hall. Before Freddy quite knows what’s happened, he’s interviewing suspects and tracking down clues. Although Clara Benson is a modern author, I love how she’s captured the tone and language of the lighter Golden Age mystery romps. A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia’s is breezy and lighthearted. It’s fun to be swept along with Freddy as he tries to untangle a web of blackmail among society’s upper crust.

When I read in the book description of Come Hell or Highball that Lola survived on “highballs, detective novels, and chocolate layer cake,” I was so in. I can root for a sleuth who loves mysteries and chocolate layer cake. The book has an American setting, which I find is a nice change from the mostly European-focused books of this time period. After her no-good playboy of a husband dies unexpectedly, Lola learns he burned through their income. Only Berta, her loyal cook, stays with her. Desperate for cash, Lola agrees to an unusual job, retrieving an item from a swanky mansion. But then a murder embroils Lola and Berta in a police investigation. The pacing is snappy, and there’s plenty of fun 1920s slang, but I think the best thing about the book is the friendship between society matron Lola and her practical cook Berta.

I’m not usually a fan of mysteries with paranormal elements, but the first Lady Adelaide mystery, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now, has just a touch of it—a debonair ghost, Lady Adelaide’s dead husband, who drops into her life when she’s hosting a weekend house party. I love a mystery set at a county house party, so I was predisposed to enjoy this book because of the setting, but the repartee between Rupert, who was a philanderer and needs to do a good deed to pass over to the other side, and Lady Adelaide added a new angle to the typical manor house mystery that had me smiling throughout the book.

Why are female criminals "ugly"? Italian criminologist Professor Caesar Lombroso discusses crime causation, justice systems, penology, and the female offender. Lombroso rallied for humane treatment of inmates, advocating programs to reform the penal system, and believed both generated a better society. He argued that criminal behavior is inherited and categorizing offenders as: crimes of passion, aka "lunatics", occasional offenders, and born criminals. He also tried to identify them by physical attributes: the skull, features, and tattooing. 

Lombroso's atavistic theories initially seem outdated - and even laughable - but are still practiced today. "(S)he looks like a criminal" is something you commonly hear. Or, people instantly judge someone's tattoos. Lombroso's approach is still utilized in true crime media. The case becomes more interesting when perpetrators are attractive. Even the monikers for female criminals are modified: femme fatale, black widow, she-devil. Readers will enjoy the contrast/comparison to 1900s criminology. The Female Offender… show more.

We are brought up to think of racism as a matter of individual attitudes and biases. If only it were that simple. Stuart Hall and his colleagues taught me that understanding how racism worked required much deeper thinking. First published in 1978, Policing the Crisis argued that race is a key constituent of Britain’s social and economic structures. It presented a picture of Britain in the 1970s as caught in a crisis of authority. Society was fracturing, giving rise to new authoritarianism in response. A moral panic about black crime was the surface justification for new “law and order” policies. But in a strange way, the country was using black people to work through its own anxieties. This was Thatcherism in embryo. The same processes continue to shape our lives today. There is no better book on how politics in Britain has functioned in the last fifty years.

This is another book that cuts through the hype, helping to define the often sensationalized connections between mafiosi in Italy and the United States.

Historian Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian, brings a perspective often missing in American books on the Mafia. His meticulous research knocks down the idea that the American Mafia was ever some giant “alien conspiracy” with Sicilian overlords, but it does examine whatever interconnections and parallels exist in real life between the two Mafias.

Much like the Critchley book, this is for those who want the facts, facts, facts. And Italian experts have a lot to contribute to the story of the American Mafia.

As someone with bipolar 2, I’ve struggled with addiction and compulsive behavior all my life. And for so long, those behaviors kept me locked in a cycle of shame. I was told that addiction is an incurable illness, which tethered me to my own story of brokenness.

This book helped me reframe my entire understanding of drugs, addiction, and how the war on drugs has done far more harm than good. It helped me understand that addiction is not a personal fundamental flaw but a symptom of broader systemic issues whose impacts are expressed through individuals, creating a culture of rejection and isolation.

Most importantly, it helped me release the story of shame and powerlessness that I’d inherited, and that had been reinforced by rehab and so many clinical interactions. It was as if someone had turned on a light in the basement of shame and pointed out a staircase… show more.

Everyone knows who Lizzie Borden is, and everyone thinks they know whether or not she did it. But what few people know about is her trial. I have always been pretty obsessed with the Lizzie Borden story (hint: she’s totally guilty). But this book put a whole new spin on the country’s original true crime.

I loved reading about the legal proceedings that put Lizzie front and center of a violent crime (not a common place for a woman to be in Gilded Age America). It painted Lizzie in a more vulnerable light than the axe-wielding murderess I had always pictured her as. It also helped explain why she was acquitted.

The baseball writer and analyst Bill James sets out to trace the path of a serial ax murderer who left a bloody trail across the US in the early 20th century. Starting with the well-chronicled deaths of eight people in Villisca, Iowa, in 1912, he reveals the signature connections between this crime and dozens of others committed over a period of 15 years from Washington State to Florida, crimes for which innocent people were put to death. A mind-boggling feat of research.