100 Books Like The Black Echo

I love this book because of the strange and wonderful 10-year-old female protagonist, a white girl who is “rescued” from Kiowa captivity on the Texas frontier in 1870, a time of Indian raids and pervasive anarchy.

This girl was assimilated into her Indian family and considers her “rescue” a kidnapping; she remembers almost nothing of her family of origin. She is icy-veined, fearless, and creatively violent. The scene where she improvises ammunition from hundreds of dimes (yes, coins) blew my mind.

From this book, I learned about how whites (especially children) who were captured by Indians quickly abandoned their former lives and usually did not want to return if given the opportunity. The language is spare, tough, and beautiful. I did not want this book to end.

I find Tom Ripley such a wonderful character—a con man who commits crimes under the guise of someone else, a male protagonist written by a lesbian.

I love the levels of deception the reader is pulled in, so is on the side of the criminal throughout, hoping for him not to get caught in his awful, amoral behaviour.

It is a masterful use of the narrative voice in crime fiction at its best.

As a reader of mysteries and thrillers, I always look for intriguing characters, a great storyline, and something special. Not all books in the genre have these. This one does. The secret element is that it’s extremely charming. I love the relationship between the protagonist, Myron, and his best friend, the wealthy Win. For instance, they are both TV trivia nuts of classic TV shows from the ‘60s and forward.

Additionally, Win is very much not what he seems. This other side is intriguing and adds depth to the character. In Coban’s book, I rooted for Myron (I didn’t always agree with his choices) but was on his side the whole time.

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. 

I liked this hundred-year-old novel because it explores some darker doubts and concerns I have always had about “the hidden heart of mankind unrestrained.” What’s more, the theme of Heart Of Darkness is reflected in the movie Apocalypse Now, with stark modern-day observations on the wounds the violence of war can inflict on the hearts and minds of humans.

A hypnotic, often troubling journey into the mind of a killer and the detective hunting him down are the reasons I return to this book time and again. They are both commonly found elements in crime thrillers today. But what Dorothy Hughes did in this book appealed to me personally, perhaps because of my own personal relationship with crime and trauma, physical as well as emotional.

I’m always fascinated by how intensely Hughes manages to immerse us in both viewpoints with only a few sentences, shifting viewpoints and playing with our conscience in subtle ways. I’ve seen enough violence and trauma to know that motivations are not always as simple as we’d like them to be, and people often do the most unexpected things for the least obvious reasons.

This is the first book in the remarkably excellent series set in Ireland during The Troubles about a Catholic police officer, Sean Duffy, who lives in Belfast. I love the way McKinty writes this character; it’s funny and very Irish and such a pleasure to read.

The mystery in this first book involves a corpse with its hand cut off, and then another person’s hand thrown into a car with them. There’s also some Italian opera mixed in for atmosphere. It’s a juicy murder mystery that I couldn’t put down.

I first encountered Douglas Adams when I caught The Hitchhiker’s Guide on late-night radio, and I was hooked. The novel is slightly different, with Adams giving a bit more consideration to plot and logic, but it has the same wonderful, rapid-fire dialogue style, which has seldom been replicated.

I absolutely love Arthur Dent’s ludicrous accidental odyssey, meeting characters like Zaphod Beeblebrox and the wonderfully named Slartibartfast. The Guide sits in the background, popping up to provide superbly funny explanations of the history of the universe, humanity’s obsession with money, and a lot more.

For me, the thing that sets this apart from a lot of SFF humor is its ‘Britishness’—there’s a distinct feel of the surreal comic legacy of, for example, Monty Python and The Goon Show.

Dorothy Dunnett is my all-time favourite author. In her lifetime she wrote the most amazing historical fiction (two series and one stand-alone novel) but she also wrote a contemporary suspense intrigue series featuring the same hero tackling new situations in each one: The Johnson Johnson series. Why do I love her writing? For several reasons. The stories are convoluted and gripping, requiring 100% of your attention, the language is beautiful and transports you, the research she did was phenomenal and her wit was razor sharp. She has a fanatical global fanbase that I'm part of.

When Daniel Roke takes on an unusual job he does it for monetary and personal reasons and has no idea he is risking his life. Dick Francis takes you from Australia to the world of English horseracing with a clever plot that is unexpected and has a really wicked twist. He also can deliver some villains that inspire visceral dislike like no other author and doesn’t let you down in this intense novel. Well done and kept me doing the infamous reading into the night.