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.

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.

Every so often, I meet a charming, humane fictional character who seems like someone I would very much like to have a long conversation with. The gentlemanly amateur detective Charles Lenox is just such a man. And, in fact, he does seem to spend an awful lot of time having tea with his friends in this novel, set in 1865 London.

But that doesn’t stop Mr. Lenox from using his impressive wits to solve the murder of a housemaid, who is dead in an apparent suicide. I love this series by author Charles Finch and eagerly await each new installment.

The fourth book in Lindsay Davis’ magnificent series of detective novels featuring Marcus Didius Falco, The Iron Hand of Mars is set in 71CE, several years after the events of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

Although much of the action takes place in the aftermath of the Batavian Revolt in 69–70CE, Davis both captures daily life in the Roman cities in Germany, but also how the events of 9CE continued to haunt Roman Germany – the Roman empire – even a generation later. 

This book introduces one of my favorite sleuths, Albert Campion. But what’s fun is that Allingham never tells the story from Campion’s point of view.

We only see him from the outside, as others do. This adds to the fun and intrigue. And there’s lots of that. In a spooky old English country mansion full of strangers, the host is murdered, and the rest of the crew goes on a twisty, scary roller-coaster ride driven by an assortment of secrets and criminal schemes—which we must slowly figure out.

This one had me on the edge of my chair, wondering what outrageous turn the plot would take next.

One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Set in Paris in the 1920s, this mystery has everything I want in an escapist read: a suave detective, his sharpshooting, bad-ass girlfriend, a twisty, unpredictable plot, and fabulous, quirky characters.

Many are based on icons of the era: Josephine Baker, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and all the usual Midnight in Paris celebrities. I first read this in my teens, and I still reread it for the madcap humor and view of Paris in the 1920s written by someone who was there.

What I love about a murder mystery is joining the dots, connecting all the different elements together.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is all about connections. Whether it is the aliens who’ve been secretly living on Earth for millions of years; or the ghost of the murder victim trying to leave a message on his sister’s phone; or Richard, the book’s hero, attempting, with the "help" of the ever-unreliable Dirk, to figure out what is going on here and why.

I was simply lost in the convolutions of a plot that also involves time travel and the highly vexing question of how a sofa came to be impossibly stuck on a landing. It’s ALL connected, and the solution makes sense of (nearly) everything.

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. 

I read this 1933 mystery novel as a teen, and it might have begun my love affair with the hero in disguise. In this book, we meet Death Bredon, a newly hired copywriter at Pym’s Publicity. We know, of course, that he is Lord Peter Wimsey in disguise, but we don’t know why the aristocratic amateur detective is pretending to be a working Joe.

The mystery is flawless; the ad agency setting is delightful; the banter is witty; and the climactic cricket match, in which our disguised hero lets his mask slip, is delicious.

Before I read Dorothy L. Sayers’ books, I’d only heard of Strong Poison and Gaudy Night, but as I read through the Lord Peter Wimsey series, I found a favorite 1920s mystery for me, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Wimsey is a veteran of the Great War with an unusual hobby: dead bodies. It might sound creepy, but it isn’t. He’s called on to fix the time of death of elderly General Fentiman, who “pegged it” on Armistice Day. I loved Lord Peter’s droll and self-deprecating attitude. People underestimate him because of his foppish exterior, but he sees what others miss. The investigation touches on PTSD—called shellshock then—in a way that feels timely to me, even after nearly a century. I loved the tour through aristocratic London with Lord Peter.