23 Books Like The Body Farm

Hannibal Lecter’s silky smooth menace still chills me like no other villain on my shelf.

Silence of the Lambs taught me how to write a terrifying villain with more than enough charisma to start a devoted cult. Every reread of this book hooks me with that hypnotic voice. Hannibal’s character is so persuasive and razor-sharp, I catch myself sympathizing before the dread slams back in.

I love how Thomas Harris forces me to straddle the line between fascination and horror, then shoves me into Clarice Starling’s head for that heart-hammering showdown with Buffalo Bill.

Decades later, for me, no thriller matches its psychological intrigue. It’s a timeless classic that keeps my lights blazing and my imagination deliciously unsettled.

I’ve never read a series that made me feel both highly spiritual and completely grounded like Michael Newton’s Soul series did. These books shifted everything for me. They helped me see that my struggles—and even the difficult people in my life—from a higher perspective. This is when I began to understand that this life isn’t supposed to be all rainbows and butterflies.

Life here on Earth is a school, and we’re all here to learn. These books helped me remember that we’ve all played every role—every gender, every skin color, the villain, and the hero. I come back to them when I need perspective, when I forget that challenges are part of the soul’s evolution, and when I need a reminder to not take things here too seriously. They didn’t just change how I think—they changed how I feel about being human.

I read this book for background for my first novel, in an effort to understand why some physicians (very few, thank goodness) kill. What I discovered in this book is what I experienced in real life working for eleven years in healthcare: hospitals are breeding grounds for medical error and cover-ups. Physician, protect thyself, so to speak. The number of times this insane MD (Michael Swango) was allowed to continue practicing when he could have been stopped is appalling, but not surprising to those inside healthcare.

This book sat on my parent's bookshelf when I was a child, and I would sporadically remove it and read it at various stages of my life. As an adult, I returned to it when I had three kids of my own. It reminds me how important family is and how fleeting childhood is. Angela learns this the hard way in my own book, and I pictured her reading this book after her children had been stolen from her. As I was writing, it always left me in tears.

Four Funerals, No Marriage by Mike Keren is a poignant, funny, deep dive into elderly caretaking, and the toll and lessons learned from it. The author is a psychologist and is somehow able to analyze his feelings/actions while immersed in the daily responsibilities of taking care of several ailing relatives. His writing is smooth, easy to read, and packed with incredible insight. I found myself simultaneously laughing and crying, and always entertained.

Nemesis is the final book to feature Miss Marple. She’s one of the most beloved female detectives of all time, and personally, one of my older-women goals. Miss Marple is a genteel, twittery, white-haired old lady, all of which is a most useful disguise for a mind like a steel trap, and a propensity to solve and avenge all manner of horrible crimes. Nemesis is not Christie’s best book, but it is surely one of Miss Marple’s most challenging and emotionally resonant cases. A posthumous request from an old friend, the millionaire Jason Rafiel, sends her off on a quest for justice, which proves both terrifying, melancholic, and yet, in her final triumph, oddly uplifting. 

A horrific multiple murder opens this book but to understand the ramifications of it, we jump to the present where we meet DCI Louise Monroe. Her story runs parallel with that of the main protagonist Jackson Brodie, but Louise is a worthy character in her own right; fiercely feminist, brave, loyal, a reluctant but loving mother determined to keep other women safe. We meet her again in future books in the series which are also excellent. An honorable mention must also go to schoolgirl heroine Reggie Chase, another brave, intelligent character who does her best to solve one of the mysteries in the book.

I love all of Tana French’s taut, riveting detective novels, but this book is my favorite.

When Cassie Maddox goes undercover to investigate a murder, she finds herself enmeshed with the dead girl’s quirky group of housemates. As she’s drawn into their lives, she is increasingly emotionally involved with them in ways that charge the atmosphere with exquisite tension and regret.

I loved the way this novel drew me into the exuberant household so that, like Cassie, I fell in love with everyone, wishing fervently for things to turn out okay and knowing there was no way they could. 

I was lucky enough to meet and interview pioneering chief medical examiner Dr. Marcella Fierro—the real-life inspiration for Kay Scarpetta, one of the most well-known characters in crime fiction. Fierro, through Cornwell, laid the foundation for every book, movie, and TV series featuring forensics. In this book, Scarpetta is back in Virginia, where she investigates the remains of a woman whose body was found dumped near railroad tracks, her throat cut and hands amputated. A penny found flattened on the rail could be a clue to the Jane Doe’s identity. 

Patricia Cornwell’s book series with medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta never disappoints, with clever plots, lots of action. In Flesh and Blood, Scarpetta receives a bizarre Mother’s Day poem and finds seven shiny 1981 pennies on the old brick wall behind her house. A sniper kills several seemingly unrelated people with a new rifle capable of incredible accuracy up to one thousand yards. One of the victims, a man involved in a lawsuit against the city, was being followed by the same sketchy insurance investigator as Scarpetta. All clues point to Scarpetta’s techno-genius millionaire daughter, Lucy. Scarpetta, her FBI husband Benton, and her ex-head of security Morino work to find out what’s really going on. The answer turns out to be Scarpetta’s worst nightmare. This book in the Scarpetta series includes a clever plot and the twists and turns that bring out the best in Cornwell’s characters.