100 Books Like Mortal Prey

As I indicated earlier, I am a Lee Child superfan. I’ve read all his original books. A thick (and expensive) biography. A long essay he wrote on heroism. All his short stories. You get the idea. So it was fun to re-read this book, his first.

It wasn’t what I remembered, that’s for sure! Yes, the action scenes are vivid and instructive (Child writes about the utility of a headbutt versus the risk of breaking your hand with a punch), and the action is what I remember most. But there’s more to this book than fights: there’s a major romance, which the author writes with gusto and in detail, heavy on feelings, not on private parts; the prose is better than solid, with imagery that really makes it come alive; and the story is plausible and tightly woven, with plenty of surprises. 

Michael Connelly continues to hit it out of the park when it comes to police procedurals. The Dark Hours is the fourth of his five novels about a young LAPD detective, Renee Ballard, who works “the late show” (the nighttime hours) and catches a midnight murder. She seeks assistance from a friend—the semi-retired detective, Harry Bosch—in working the case. I’ve read every one of Connelly’s Bosch Series books and have loved them all. Once you become involved and engrossed—usually by the third page—you cannot stop reading! Connelly’s novels are that good. 

The author blends historical facts into a great fiction novel about Hitler’s Gold train. This remarkable book takes today’s headlines of a missing gold train hidden in a cave in Europe apparently being found. Turns out it was a false alarm, but rumors of hidden gold laden trains persist.

This book made me realise that women’s role in fiction didn’t have to be the ‘little woman’ or the ‘love interest’.

It was published back in 2001 when female protagonists were a rarity, but James Patterson gives us not one, but four strong women who get together to solve crimes that the police alone cannot. I love the fact that these women are willing to break the rules in order to succeed in a man’s world. But at the same time, they are a club in the traditional sense: they eat, drink, and have fun together, while watching each other’s backs.

It was a wonderfully empowering experience to discover this book (and even more so when I realised there were a whole series of books about the same group of women).

Even while pursuing the nastiest criminals Detective Lucas Davenport and his sardonic sense of humor make me laugh. A deranged man wants to punish the female psychiatrist who once put him in a mental hospital. When he kidnaps the woman and her two young daughters, Lucas focuses on who stands to benefit. The combative resentful husband she's divorcing, her business partner, and her elderly father's trophy wife who will inherit his fortune if his daughter dies. 

The kidnapper inflicts harsh punishment on the psychiatrist and plays mind games with Lucas. He telephones Lucas, taunts him and threatens to kill his captives. Lucas has no idea where they are, but he can play mind games too. An emotional roller-coaster ride until the last page of this gritty suspense thriller.

I like reading Mosley’s mystery novels because they are about people overcoming extreme difficulties, and this book is one of his best. I couldn’t put it down.

The main character is an African-American private detective working in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s, and Mosley paints a realistic picture of LA during that time.  There are always a few women in distress and white policemen who don’t like the black detective and constantly make his efforts more difficult. 

Hercule Poirot states in this book it is unintelligent and stupid to say a madman murders because he is mad; I love that he looks to the why. Alexander Bonaparte Cust is a complex nuanced and even more importantly, entirely believable character. Even eighty years after this was written the story holds up – it's compelling and fast-paced. I don’t like the random uses e.g. loony and lunatic but given the times (“dastardly scoundrel” is also used!) overall the Queen of Crime did a very solid job of an authentic mentally ill character.

I love the character of Kinsey Millhone because she’s so human and relatable. Her life is messy; she gets herself caught up in situations where she knows she ought to let things drop but just can’t let them go, and she has a kind heart. She also has the endearing quality of being self-deprecating and not taking herself too seriously.

This book is set in the 1980s, and I enjoy seeing Kinsey’s legwork to solve her case without the benefit of mobile phones or the internet. I also love her relationship with her elderly neighbor and how protective she is of him when she feels that new people in the neighborhood are taking advantage of him.

Did you know that Ray Bradbury wrote mysteries? He wrote a few toward the end of his career, and they’re set in the deeply weird world of Southern California, which immediately makes them off-kilter. Death is a Lonely Business follows a nameless protagonist—a writer, by the way—who gets drawn into a mysterious series of…Disappearances? Murders? Perhaps just bad luck? Filled with noir-inspired settings but with that ineffable Bradbury twist of the fantastic, this is a book for late nights and nostalgia. Strange and puzzling, and always ready to twist your expectations.

Supernatural Thrillers: Every Dead Thing by John Connolly is the first novel in Connolly’s Charlie Parker series (it contains Parker’s origin story). If you like your thrillers with a blood-curdling slice of the supernatural, run, don’t walk, to the nearest bookstore and pick up this novel. Haunted by his dead wife and daughter, Parker is an ex-cop turned private detective. And the cases Parker works—Good Lord!—best sleep with the lights on. Though John Connolly’s an Irish lad, his Parker novels take place along the East Coast (Parker lives in Portland, Maine). You’ll realize how literary and poetic Connolly’s prose is as the hairs on the back of your neck begin to rise and you refuse to investigate that sound you just heard coming from the basement.