I'm looking for a few good "classic" detective/… books, individual or series, doesn't matter, preferably something written in the last 20 years and in a realistic (non fantasy, no superpowers, etc.) environment.
By "classic" i mean the "classic" … some intro, something happens (usually someone gets murdered), the "detective" gets involved (either actual police, or someone who will eventually solve the case), and you, the reader are solving the murder (or whatever) from the detectives viewpoint with all the knowledge and reasoning as the detective.
<rant>
I've read a bunch of "modern" (not a right word for this) books, and they seem to go along the pattern where you follow a story from the viewpoint of five different people in three different timelines, where in the first half of the book it implies that person 1 is in danger and that person 2 in "the past" is actually person 5 from "now", but then a "plot twist", you find out that person 3 actually killed person 2, but person 4 is actually person 3 from the past, but in the end, person 1 who seemed to be in danger is actually the murderer now by stealing the identity of person 6 in the past. All the people with "a past" know that, you're reading the book from "within their head", but somehow they don't meantion it to you, the reader, just for the plot-twistieness.
In some cases (like one of us is lying) the multiple perspective thing is actually written ok (some doubt between them, but not a lot of "hiding the facts" from the reader, but some others are horrible… i won't name titles not to spoil them, but eg. a woman is "solving" a murder of someone that seems connected to her husbands murder, and for the whole book you're looking for who killed them both, but hey, the wife actually killed her husband, she knew that, knew there was no relation there… or where a mental patient comes to a house where her former doctor (presumed murdered) lives, and the book is written around her being in danger there by someone, but in the end, she was the murderer, etc. I mean, i get the concept, "the usual suspects" spiel, but you're looking at the movie from the detectives perspective, not from within kevin spaceys head.
<end rant>
So yeah, something "classic", as above 🙂
by NerminPadez
7 Comments
Michael Connelly is generally my go to for well executed straightforward procedural like that. There are also a lot of Japanese detective stories that don’t do the whole tricksy narrator thing, which is getting old, I agree.
The Word is Murder, by Anthony Horowitz
Try the Hawthorn / Horowitz series by Anthony Horowitz. The first book is The Word is Murder, there’s six in all and each one is better than the last one. Hawthorn is the private eye and Horowitz is a version of the author. The conceit is that he is writing about Hawthorn’s cases similar to Watson. It feels both golden age classic and very contemporary at the same time.
I really like Ann Cleeves, especially the Vera Stanhope series. I also enjoyed the Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway series.
I enjoy the Peter Robinson DCI Banks series. I think it fits your request pretty well.
I think you may enjoy The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. The mystery isn’t a murder, it’s more of a “who in the hell are you, REALLY?” re: a celebrated novelist who has never told the truth about her background. Her biographer is the “detective” who is listening to her story and figuring out the real truth.
These fall a bit out of your timeframe but I think they’re good additions and relatively modern if you’ve already read the Golden Age detective novels by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, John Dickson Carr, et al.
Henrie O series by Carolyn G. Hart
Death on Demand series by Carolyn G. Hart
I think of Hart as the American successor to Agatha Christie. Dare I say, her writing is more vivid and colorful than Christie. Although Christie’s plotting is unsurpassed.
Bernie Rhodenbarr / The Burglar Who . . . series by Lawrence Block. A thief who has the bad luck of breaking into places where a murder has happened lol. So he’s forced to act as a detective to avoid being punished for crimes he didn’t commit.
Archy McNally series by Lawrence Sanders. Another writer Vincent Lardo took over the series after Sanders died and I think the later books had better plots and more surprising reveals of whodunnit. They’re all entertaining though. The protagonist is a playboy/failure to launch-type who works for his dad’s law firm as a private investigator. He’s a fun character and very witty.
Hope these fit what you were looking for.