Books like The Lock Artist — picked by fans

I love this book because it’s the best fictional example I’ve ever seen of a character’s disability being eclipsed by his talent. Lincoln Rhyme is paralyzed, but his talent as a criminologist is far more important—and Deaver showcases Rhyme’s genius and passion as often as he details the difficulties of disability.

I find the book’s mystery compelling and the characters well-written, and I couldn’t get enough of the relationship between Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. I’ve never seen a better portrayal of a partnership based solidly on mutual respect and admiration. I’m so grateful for how this story demonstrates that disability doesn’t need to stop you from making a real impact through the gifts and talents you’ve been given.

Will Trent is a most unlikely hero of a series, especially as a GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) agent. Why? Will is severely dyslexic. He can barely read and write. So why is he a top agent? His disability gives him an unusual way of looking at crimes, making his disadvantage an important element in solving those crimes. Raised in a series of orphanages and cruel foster homes, Will is like the injured puppy you want to care for and make his life better. His relationship with women is complicated, including his first-love Angie, who shares some of the same orphanage experiences; Amanda, his demanding boss; Faith, his partner; and Sarah, his true love. Will is naïve and street-smart at the same time, which makes him a fascinating hero.

Iron House, short for the Iron Mountain Home for Boys, is a thriller that features orphaned brothers: weakling Julian, and his strong and fiercely protective brother, Michael. After being bullied to the point of cracking, Julian kills his abuser. Michael escapes Iron House and takes the blame as he leaves.

This leads the brothers on two very different paths. Julian is adopted and, though mentally unbalanced, becomes a writer of dark children’s stories. Michael is also adopted off the streets by the head of a crime syndicate who teaches him how to kill. Iron House is a complicated story of abuse, torment, and love. The book is not for the faint of heart.

This is the first book in the Joseph O’Loughlin series, and my favorite because it shows Joe shortly after his Parkinson’s diagnosis.

I know it’s popular to portray sick people as angelic, long-suffering inspirations to us all, but reality often differs, especially as someone adjusts to a devastating diagnosis and its far-reaching impact. As a respected psychologist, Joe is normally thoughtful, intelligent, and kind, but as he becomes ensnared in the death of a former acquaintance, his personal despair over his illness sends him into a self-destructive tailspin. Rather than making me dislike Joe, the honesty of his struggle made me sympathize with him all the more. 

Algren has been called a proletarian writer. Working primarily in Chicago from the 1930s to the 1950s, he was intensely concerned with the plight of the common man. His milieux were the gambling dens, the sawdust bars, the decaying hooker-prowled streets, the beat-down police stations, the shooting galleries, the slums, the cheap walk-up flats where broken men and women fought each other in desperate battles to survive one more miserable day. His characters were the poor, the ignorant, the addicted, tramps, bums, card sharps, petty crims, accidental murderers... But in all of them he found something human, something that might have been good, might have been worthy of a decent life – if only it had been given half a chance.

A brilliant hypnotic novel that almost no one read. Albert French was the victim of a publishing nightmare—his editor and his publisher, both of whom had primed his novel for a major publicity push, left for new jobs before the pub date, after which his book was orphaned and abandoned. For anyone not in the book business, it might seem hard to believe that a terrific novel would be left to languish, but, sadly, such an event is not uncommon in American publishing.

Set in an African American section of Pittsburgh in 1950, I Can’t Wait on God evokes both the day-to-day lives of ordinary people and the striving and hopelessness of African Americans trying to escape the doomed existence to which so many are condemned.  French weaves a tale that is starkly realistic, yet with a mystical overtone that creates a sort of intoxicating haze. The narrative seems straightforward,… show more.

In a series of interviews, Arthur Harding tells us of his life as an East End rogue at the turn of the century. The characters he encountered are a “Who’s Who” of the underworld at that time and his descriptions of Spitalfields were very useful to me during research for The Worst Street In London.

Sipho is a young man with nothing to lose. He drops out of high school and joins a car-stealing syndicate. The novel is part thriller and part coming-of-age tale, and the story takes the reader on an emotional journey as Sipho is sucked deeper and deeper into South African township crime. The author grew up in this township, and but for his other talents might have followed the same path as his protagonist. A remarkable look at the reality of township life and its effect on the youth.

I knew the author when I worked for his literary agent in London, and this is a fascinating and frightening look at the London crime world of the Kray Twins. They ruthlessly ruled parts of London, including the East End, and was an essential background re-read when I wrote my own London crime novel. I was trying to show behind the scenes of the world of striptease, but this book is a reminder of what’s behind even that behind-the-scenes world. I used to send a 6-monthly royalty cheque to their mother as their share for co-operating with the book, which is why it’s so authentic.

Few scholars have done more to demystify the nature of crime in Mexico than Pablo Piccato. His book City of Suspects is a nuanced history that reveals that the very meaning of crime was contested in early twentieth-century Mexico City. While Mexican elites tried to define criminals as a social class, the urban poor, who experienced crime as a part of their everyday lives, saw crime as an individual phenomenon. This book, like the others on this list, is also a story about the ways people used and thought about public space. At a time when Mexico’s government sought to transform the capital into a modern metropolis along the lines of Paris or New York, the poor resisted efforts to exclude them from that future.