70 Books Like Peace

I was thrilled to stumble upon another brilliant female detective series, and I zipped through this twisty little number in two days! When a woman is found hanging in her Dublin home, all signs point to suicide. Enter DCS Frankie Sheehan, a detective with a sharp eye, a potty mouth, and an innate ability to climb inside the heads of the victims. She’s brilliant!

Suffering from PTSD driven by a vicious attack during a previous investigation, Frankie soon learns that the lines between killer and victim are becoming increasingly blurred. This atmospheric and immersive police procedural just blew me away. Olivia's writing style is compelling and absorbing, with a strong sense of setting and characters I will never forget.

This series has a character seen too rarely in this genre.

DI Isobel Blood is a middle-aged woman with a teenage daughter. We see her trying to juggle her often emotionally draining work with parenting duties. This is a really good introduction to DI Blood and a strong cast of supporting characters.

Set in Derbyshire, it has a really strong sense of place. The story is tightly plotted, with deeply satisfying reveals and reversals, and the author balances the investigation with Blood’s personal challenges.

The mystery itself is imaginative and original and difficult issues are dealt with sensitively and compassionately.

I bought this book in Hatchard’s bookshop because I liked the cover, and because I like stories about Hell. A great choice on my part—this wonderful crime/fantasy novel features a detective called Thomas Fool in the most lawless land there can be. Thomas has to investigate a series of grisly murders which threaten the Devil’s domain; and to make his police procedural story work Unsworth has to invent a whole new mythology of Hell in which murder is even possible. The writing is stunningly evocative and the logic of the world building is remarkable even if it is,  ultimately, bonkers. This book and its sequel, The Devil’s Evidence, are the noirest of noirs and are completely unputdownable. 

I seem to be addicted to long-running series with British detectives, though not all written by British authors, and A Clubbable Woman is the first book in this twenty-one-book series by Reginald Hill.

When I began to write fiction and worked on creating Corelli and Parker, Hill was one of the authors I looked to for inspiration. Although his Yorkshire detectives, the abrupt and rude Detective Superintendent Andrew "Andy" Dalziel and the educated, calm, and well-mannered Detective Sergeant Peter Pascoe, did not fit my vision for my own characters, I enjoyed their antics and read the entire series. The books are fun and challenging and this is a great beginning.

I discovered Kirschman through her non-fiction—a book called I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know—when I was working on my first mystery.

Later I discovered she also writes a darned good story herself. Like this one, featuring Dot Meyerhoff, newly hired police psychologist. Dot’s job? Help the police cope better with their stress—those daily dangers, risks, uglinesses.

First client—Ben Gomez, a rookie who just encountered his first corpse. He strikes Dot as a little too sensitive. When Ben becomes a corpse himself, it looks like another cop suicide. Shouldn’t Dot have seen this coming? But she didn’t.

The secondary theme is significant and well handled: the prevalence of police suicide. I learned a lot. Hint: it’s a cozy, not a police procedural.

Windsor Horne Lockwood III, otherwise known as Win, is Myron Bolitar’s psychotic sidekick in Coben’s long-running series. Win is pure antihero.

He and Myron have been best friends since they roomed together at college. Win is from ‘old money’ and doesn’t try to hide it, he runs Lock-Horne Investments & Security, and is an expert in martial arts and weapons. Other than Myron and Myron’s business partner, Esperanza, and maybe half a dozen others, he has no emotional attachment to humans.

Despite his psychopathy, Win is a very funny character, and his loyalty to his few friends is absolute. Win is the second book on the list in which the sidekick has gotten a book all to themselves and it was a joy to read.

Graham Masterton grew to fame with his horror novels, including the best-selling novel The Manitou. It was only decades later that he began his Katie Maguire series of police procedurals, which have been equally successful. Having read Masterton over the years, I was fascinated by his shift from horror to crime fiction, often incorporating horror elements into his work. I started primarily as a horror writer, but have now shifted toward crime fiction. Masterton’s novels have been great “guides” in this respect.

A man found hanging sparks suspicion so, just to check all is okay, the cops hang him again. Well, not him. A stand-in. But it’s a fine little detail that sums up this shrewd book – cold, hard, well-researched, loaded with bold ideas. This is Northern Ireland crime fiction as it should be, the procedural narrative we once struggled to host. Policing took place when cops were pretty much soldiers. Nowadays it’s different. And Dempsey’s crime fiction is second to none. The aftermath of the Troubles – and its socio-political complexity – is sewn in here, used to both enhance tension and amplify relationships. So, a forensic shrink and a cop explore the creepy case of a missing girl after the aforementioned hanging. Get your seat belt on – this thing twists.

This was the first book I’ve read from the point of view of an investigative journalist, and I really enjoyed this angle. And I really loved the character of Ingrid, a very strong female lead who will stop at nothing to get to the truth. Ingrid delves deeper into the story of 8-year-old Kelly Doherty’s murder, believing that there's a chance the man convicted is innocent. But she's soon warned off by someone who’ll do anything to keep the past buried.   

Claire's writing style is entertaining and engaging. This atmospheric story is told from multiple viewpoints, which keeps the pages turning quickly. It's dark and chilling with a plot that builds and builds and kept me guessing until the climactic ending that I totally didn’t see coming. 

This is an original and timely twist on the classic mismatched-partners story.

An extremely well-crafted police procedural, the central mystery is a missing person investigation. As the first in a series, it expertly sets up a compelling cast of supporting characters, with a well-written, likable, and relatable central protagonist.

The unique selling point is the pairing of DCS Kat Frank with an advanced AI detective that appears in holographic form. The book is set just a few years from now and is in principal entirely possible.

AIDE Lock is very much a work in progress and it’s no spoiler to say that despite Frank’s misgivings, she learns as much from the artificial officer as it learns from her. There are more books planned and I look forward to reading them.