Books like The Colors of All the Cattle — picked by fans

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.

I love the setting and atmosphere of the book, first and foremost. New York City in 1932, just before the end of Prohibition, so there are still bootleggers and gangsters and all that jazz (literally).

I love the characters of Nick and Nora Charles – witty, sophisticated, glamorous, and living a life I can only dream of (literally – I was born 50 years too late!). While it has its humorous elements, this is a hardboiled detective story.

I love the contrast between Nick and Nora and the underworld characters that they encounter, as well as the strong undertone of cynicism that runs through it. It feels more like real life than many other detective stories, where everything is resolved by the end. 

Tim Weaver has a way of getting under the skin of not just his characters but his readers, too. For me, it helped that his main character, like me, had lost his wife to cancer. I could instantly relate. But beyond that, the plot was gripping, drawing me in and holding my attention from start to finish.

While reading one of his books and for a long time afterward, your mind has only two ways to be—either reading his book or thinking about his book.

The intricacies of the investigation multiply, but all of the clues are laid before the reader, though often veiled. The suspects are intriguing characters. Poirot, the little Belgian, is arrogant, but his arrogance seems justified by his brilliant investigative insights.

I love this complex character immersed in a complex mystery. This is classic Christie.

A retro pulp-fiction novel from one of the world’s best-selling authors, David Baldacci.

A Gambling Man is the second intriguing story in Baldacci’s Archer Series about a former WWII veteran working as a private detective. Archer is joined en route to Los Angeles by a beautiful young lady with ambitions in Hollywood who leads them into dangerous territory with murderous gangsters and politicians trying to improve the odds in their favour.

Baldacci’s Archer Series is modeled on the early detective stories of authors like Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane. He creates a tough guy detective in the style of the early masters while making Archer more appealing to modern readers – less macho and more respectful of the independent women joining his fight to stop the death and destruction. 

Child’s Jack Reacher is a classic knight errant, strong, resourceful, and courageous who has headlined dozens of books. But this book stands out because, in the finale, he squares off with a formidable opponent with a hook for a hand.

Reacher struggles to stay conscious during this standoff because he has a woodworking nail stuck in his head, shrapnel from a shotgun blast, that is inexorably shutting down his brain and body. I will remember that passage for quite some time.  

If I’m being honest—and I’m guessing Ben Shepherd would like me to be honest—I’d be content to list five Burke books here.

Burke is a national treasure. I don’t aggravate easily, but it aggravates me that he doesn’t have a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He is one of the best combination writers and storytellers on the planet.

In this book, Burke’s protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, investigates a series of murders of prostitutes. There’s a connection to the murders and New Orleans gangster Julie “Baby Feet” Balboni.

In the book, Robicheaux also has conversations with Confederate General John Bell Hood, which has nothing to do with organized crime, but is a great example of Burke’s prowess as a writer. It was made into a 2009 movie starring Tommy Lee Jones as Robicheaux and John Goodman as Balboni. Robicheaux’s sidekick, Clete Purcell, is one of the best characters in crime fiction.

Patricia Wentworth is one of the most atmospheric writers I’ve read.

This is the first in her Miss Silver series, featuring an elderly lady who looks a lot like Miss Marple but pre-dates her. While still within the cozy genre, parts of this book, especially the opening section, where the mysterious man in the gray mask makes his first appearance, can make your spine tingle with that delicious feeling of tension that only a good mystery book brings.

Like Miss Marple, Miss Silver is adept at deducing what the various protagonists might do based on her reading of their psychology, but the characters are much better fleshed out in these books, as is the period in which it is set. And the romance is a definite bonus.

Los Angeles private eye Happy Doll is ticking along nicely, subsidising his detective work by protecting the women at a Thai spa massage parlour from over-amorous clients.

Everything is hunky-dory until he gets into a ferocious fight with a customer who ends up dead. Well-crafted crime noir that manages to be witty and quirky as well as occasionally violent, with pleasing echoes of Marlowe and Lew Archer.

I love London. I love old mysteries. I love the Art Deco era. I love magic. As a child, my dad was part of the Magic Circle, and my brother and I learned some of the tricks–and when I say ‘my brother and I learned tricks,’ I mean I twirled endless chiffon scarfs from thin air and tried not to get cut in half, and he tried to cut me in half.

Tom Mead’s tale of conjuring, stage trickery, and locked room mystery somehow transports me back to my childhood, even though his 1930s setting is far further back than my 70s childhood! He gives us that Golden Age impossible puzzle–how is a man killed inside a locked room?–and I admit, my guess was quite wrong in this cleverly woven tale of intrigue and deceit, but the magic of smoke, mirrors, trickery, and Art Deco theatre more than made up… show more.