46 Books Like Original Sin

I was instantly pulled into this first book in the Rivers of London series because of the main character. I found Constable Peter Grant to be delightfully awkward. His very much unwanted ability to see and speak to lingering spirits results in his assignment to a secret police unit that investigates crimes involving magic.

He’s stunned to meet gods, goddesses, and more fantastic beings who exist in a hidden world alongside mortals. I loved meeting all of the engaging characters, normal and supernatural. I was totally engaged in the believable world created by the author, where the ordinary ticks beside the extraordinary. Even better, the humorous situations Peter stumbles into as he chases down whodunit made me laugh out loud.

This book was published in 1946, at the end of the 2nd World War, by a writer who had been a model, a dancer, a shop assistant, and a governess, as well as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in a rural hospital, which is where this wartime story is set.

For me, it’s the ultimate "closed circle" whodunnit, where an ever-decreasing group of suspects is trapped together, in this case surrounded by wounded and dying soldiers. It’s brilliantly claustrophobic, and you know it has to be one of the main characters, however unlikely that seems. The solution and the perpetrator are in plain sight. But I didn’t get it till the end.

Actually, I tell a lie. I had read crime before my honeymoon, but only Agatha Christie, whose whodunnits always feature murders that are tastefully described and over in a couple of lines.

With Christie, it’s all about the puzzle, and boy, is she good at that. Her characters are often a bit two-dimensional, but you forgive that for the sake of her plots, which always race along and convince, however unlikely in real life.

This is one of her most famous ones, and rightly so. No spoilers here, but if you read this as I did as a teenager (recommended by my father) you are in for a grand surprise. Hopefully.

This book is not strictly a whodunnit, as Highsmith follows the murderer closely, and we see not only the murder but experience all its ghastly ramifications. 

This was her first novel, and it set the template for the rest of her oeuvre, in which a relatively ordinary person is dragged into a horrific situation by a chance meeting with a personable weirdo. It could have been you on that train; that’s the shocking thing. And soon our hero is caught in a trap from which it seems there is to be no escape.

This is a gripping read and will set you up, if you’re compulsive like me, to read all her other books, which, though often quite dark, always have the most compelling plots.

Once I got into reading crime properly, I soon found my favourite period: the so-called "Golden Age" of the 1920s and 30s, where the writing was all about a clever plot and less about nasty descriptions of murder and death.

This book was written bang in the middle of this period. Though I personally am not the hugest fan of Sayers' rather smug and entitled detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, I love this book for its supremely clever plot, with clues concealed in the most unlikely places.

It’s also a fun setting among a bunch of artists in Galloway, Scotland. One painter, a quarrelsome drunkard, is murdered. Six others are suspected. You will be puzzling over paint colours and train timetables to work out the killer.

I have always liked the idea of living in a houseboat on the River Thames. This wonderful story simultaneously fed my fantasies and made me realise it might not be as idyllic as I imagined.

The houseboats on Battersea Reach are like a small village–each character is an individual yet integral part of the whole, their fortunes rising and falling with the tide. Through these characters, the book paints a picture of sixties London, swinging yet also unforgiving for those who slip between the cracks. Penelope Fitzgerald lived on a barge in Battersea, and I think much of the story is based on personal experience.

What I particularly liked was the sense of the houseboat dwellers not quite belonging, being offshore in more ways than one. 

As with all the books I have chosen, the River Thames is a central part of this story.

From the affluence of Chelsea, it moves through the varied moods of the river, from crime in Rotherhithe through the Thames Barrier Park (one of my favourite London parks) to the point where it becomes the North Sea. At each twist and turn in the tale, the river matches the events perfectly.

The story is centred round a crime, but what I found fascinating was how a single error of judgement on the part of an innocent academic leaves him homeless, jobless, and in danger, with nowhere to run but a tiny patch of grass by the river. 

As a bookseller as well as a writer and editor, I believe strongly that good children’s books should also be read by adults.

The setting here is 1683, and the River Thames is frozen. I studied history, and I often stand on London Bridge and try to imagine the flowing water as a field of ice with stalls and side shows on the frozen surface. Embankments and new bridges mean the river no longer freezes, but this story brings historical London to life and allows us to feel what it would have been like.

A magic nocturnal Frost Fair, a lost boy, and a determined twin sister are at the heart of this bewitching story, which is dark yet uplifting–a perfect combination that had me gripped throughout. 

Anne Hillerman is the daughter of Tony Hillerman, a well-known author of the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Navajo mysteries. Anne continued her father’s work, bringing to the fore Officer Bernadette Maneulito alongside Chee and Leaphorn.

I enjoy her style, which is a bit lighter than her father’s, the interactions between the main characters and their families, and, of course, the twisty plots that keep me guessing. I like mystery series that are as much about the characters as they are about the crimes, and this series has been continued through two generations of authors, so there’s a lot to love. Also, I’m an amateur astronomer, and the astronomy connection of Stargazer is fun.

Colin Dexter immediately pulls me into what reads as a real world.

The writing is so beautiful, I’m not aware of anything but the story. The chapters are delightfully short and tight, so much so that the pages absolutely flow past.

I prefer reading books that, even though they are clearly fiction, read as true crime stories. When I read a Colin Dexter Morse mystery, I am unaware of pages, chapters, sentences, punctuation. I am allowed to be totally immersed in the story. The casts of perfectly drawn characters in each story always intrigue me.

Morse is flawed, a quality he shares with the camera. He doesn’t mind being wrong, a rare quality in a human.