Books like True Detective

I particularly like the way V. I. vigorously pursues every lead, no matter how dangerous the quest. I also appreciate the vignettes of Chicago, where I was born and raised.

Dual mysteries challenge the tough, savvy, energetic private investigator, V.I. Warshawski. In the process of solving these mysteries, V. I. confronts current social issues of extreme importance, to wit, political corruption, sex trafficking, immigration opponents, and her own familial skeletons in the closet. 

I love Sarah Paretsky’s novels because her private investigator V.I. Warshawski is a vulnerable badass. This 21st installment is classic Warshawski who, like me, is now a woman of a certain age. She may be a bit slower to recover from physical challenges, but her passion for justice is as strong as ever as she confronts Chicago corruption and mobsters from the cold waters of Lake Michigan to her childhood Southside neighborhood, one we’ve come to love as much as she does.

I am currently reading this book and enjoying it. I have been a big fan of the Dresden Files series for a long time and admire the strength it takes to be a wizard in the modern world. Jim comes up with the wildest and imaginative stories featuring battles with the supernatural. The author is also a fencer and martial artist just like me!  

It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t heard of Lee Child’s protagonist Jack Reacher.

I recommend his second in the series to start with because that’s when Child started writing the rest of the series in third person as opposed to first.

Die Trying has Reacher witnessing a kidnapping, and ultimately being captured himself. As Reacher and the woman try to outsmart their captors and uncover the truth behind their abduction, the tension never lets up. 

But what really sets this book apart is how Reacher's military background is woven into the fabric of the story, creating a character whose unique perspective, skills, and experience make him an unstoppable force.

It would be obscene to read this on a Kindle. This early Dashiell Hammett novel has to be read in paperback, the older a copy you can find, the better.

It has everything a great pulp novel should have; murder, crooked cops, gangs, and a rumpled too-honest-for-his-own-good hero. What I love about this book is how Hammett uses his own experience working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency (who were basically hired thugs) and a real historical event (a labor dispute in Montana that resulted in several deaths) to weave a solid crime novel.

This is an absolutely brilliant pastiche of Victorian literature, starring the era’s two greatest fictional characters.

It weaves Holmes and Watson into the basic plot of Dracula, with Watson grumbling about setting the record straight because that ‘spurious monograph’ by some fella called Stoker missed out on Holmes’s involvement in the case!

A light, quite short, hugely entertaining read.

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.

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.

One of the best explanations I’ve read of the rise of Fascism in Hitler’s Germany. I agree that ignoring the lessons of history means we’ll be forced to endure repetition. And Kerr paints such a chilling scenario no one in their right mind would wish the maxim to come true. His prose applies color and form like an artist at the top of their game.

At times I found him reminiscent of Chandler in the way he portrays the Nazis as the worst gangsters in the game. This is the first book of the Bernard Gunther series, and I was so enthralled that I raced through the others in just a few days. His storyline is filled with horror, passion, fear, and pathos—a tour de force of emotions.

Another writer-hero, Anthony Horowitz writes as himself in this page-turning whodunit. Well-known for his television work on Midsomer Murders, Poirot, and Foyle’s War, Horowitz knows how to craft a mystery. When ex-cop turned private investigator Nathaniel Hawthorne approaches Horowitz about ghostwriting a book about his cases, Horowitz isn’t interested. Annoying and eccentric, Hawthorne isn’t someone Horowitz wants to be around, let alone write about. But when a famous actor’s wealthy mother is murdered six hours after planning her own funeral, Horowitz gets pulled into the investigation anyway. Though very much a Sherlock Holmes and Watson relationship, Hawthorne and Horowitz are more adversarial, making them an entertaining team. You want them to be friends, but then again, you don’t. The word isn’t just murder, but funny, engaging, and endearing, too.