Books like Depth of Winter — picked by fans

If I’m being honest—and I’m guessing Ben Shepherd would like me to be honest—I’d be content to list five Burke books here.

Burke is a national treasure. I don’t aggravate easily, but it aggravates me that he doesn’t have a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He is one of the best combination writers and storytellers on the planet.

In this book, Burke’s protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, investigates a series of murders of prostitutes. There’s a connection to the murders and New Orleans gangster Julie “Baby Feet” Balboni.

In the book, Robicheaux also has conversations with Confederate General John Bell Hood, which has nothing to do with organized crime, but is a great example of Burke’s prowess as a writer. It was made into a 2009 movie starring Tommy Lee Jones as Robicheaux and John Goodman as Balboni. Robicheaux’s sidekick, Clete Purcell, is one of the best characters in crime fiction.

Dave Robicheaux is one of my favorite characters, perhaps because I can relate to him so easily. James Lee Burke is a master of metaphors and he can offer descriptions of the sky like no other. His storytelling is enjoyable and almost philosophical at times.

In this book Burke's firsthand knowledge of the pristine scenery in Northern Montana shines above his usual inside look at the Louisiana bayou country. Robicheauxs's sidekick, Clete Purcel, is a colorful and easily likable character.

Swan Peak wasn’t as exciting as the other Robicheaux novels I’ve read but it was still a great page-turner and good story.

Yeah, I know, naming Jack Reacher as one of the badasses of crime fiction is the equivalent of a six-inch putt. A gimme. Child has taken a totally implausible premise—a six-foot-five former Army MP wandering around the United States and finding trouble with nothing but an ATM card in his pocket—and created one of the best characters in suspense literature. When Reacher is on the hunt, the results are never in doubt, which is why we love him. He’s the fullback coming through the line, time and time again, and no one can stop him. One reviewer of Child’s books said that Reacher is never the underdog. That’s a perfect description.

This is the perfect mix of politics and crime fiction, illustrating the old saying that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Like all the books in this series, I thoroughly enjoy C.J. Box showing me the Wyoming he knows so well, the state’s harsh winters with snow so deep it literally comes up your thighs, the abundant wildlife, and the people.

I love how the story begins with the hero, game warden Joe Pickett, investigating the disappearance of a well-to-do British woman from an elite guest ranch and then unexpectedly spirals headlong into green energy corruption.

Mostly, I appreciate Box’s depiction of self-serving politicians going up against an unassuming game warden who just wants to do his job and go home to his loving family. 

Diane Harbaugh is a female, strong, badass similar to Jason Bourne. You’re going to love her. Making them cry is an action-packed romp through disillusioned agents, informants, and cartels. Diane navigates on the edges through multiple scapes, all while trying to keep her reputation intact. She must deal with unscrupulous bosses while trusting a rogue CIA agent and a cartel informant. Every time she gets out of trouble, more trouble finds her. This book is worth your time.

Gabino Iglesias has become a phenomenon in horror through a lot of hustle and plain hard work. His 2022 novel cemented his reputation as the king of border horror.

This novel follows the fate of Mario, a man broken by debt due to his family’s crushing medical bills. With a failing marriage, he reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, agreeing to do one last job hijacking a cartel’s cash shipment before it can reach Mexico.

Mario reluctantly works with his meth-addicted friend and a cartel insider. To make this dangerous endeavor worse, enter supernatural horrors that shocked me—and I am not easily shocked.

Is there blood? Of course! Gore? Plenty! Monsters and demons? Yes! You are guaranteed to lose sleep after reading this novel.

Underrated this author may be, but not this book! I wish this genre could be taken as seriously as literary fiction often is, because author Azayler puts her heart and soul into everything she writes. She is truly the queen of urban romance and love, studying the craft to make sure that her characters penetrate the spirit of the reader. No one can make being in love be so dangerous, to the point where the characters are willing to die for it.

I love that Luisa sells her beauty to the highest bidder at the start of the book. It’s very rare to see a non-innocent heroine, and so this is tops for me. The icing on the cake, and I’m trying not to send spoilers here, is that Luisa doesn’t really understand that Salvador is and will continue to act like a cartel man.

Luisa realizes very quickly that the deal is a lousy one and that she’s sold herself to a predator. And this is what I love about the book: Luisa doesn’t hang about and wail; she acts, runs into even more trouble, and then learns to play the people she’s in with at their own game. It’s a fun book but very dark.  

The Cellar will have you holding your breath at each turn! I felt like my skin was crawling while I was reading this book and I was thinking of ways to escape the nightmare. Natasha Preston did a fantastic job of making you feel like you’re living in Summer’s shoes. It’s a gripping story of a horrific kidnapping and the new life Summer finds herself living in. This book makes you glance twice over your shoulder when you’re walking alone at night and it is a reminder of how quickly something like this can happen. The Cellar opens your mind to both the kidnapper and the captives. Highly recommend this book!   

Aimee Baker’s Doe is a diptych: poems in the first section focus on missing women, while those in the second section reimagine the lives of unidentified women.

Baker creates recurrent, multiple patterns of imagery that celebrate the beauty and dignity of each woman – in argument, essentially, with the ways true crime sometimes exploits and objectifies victims’ lives. At the same time, Doe is about North America as a captivating space of the imagination: the poet creates a geography by turns intimate and vast, familiar and strange, beautiful and terrible.

The finely-crafted textures of the poems in Doe, as well as the apparent dedication to investigation and research in the work overall, make for a rare combination.