“She’s a fine writer. I knew her in the House of Lords, of course. She was an absolutely delightful, charming person. This is the first of the Cordelia Gray series, who is a very tough, very intelligent, frankly, a very PD James woman. I mean, she could have been writing about herself.” Read more...
Jeffrey Archer, Novelist
The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman
***Shortlisted for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
The Thursday Murder Club is a relentless parody of a classic, cosy murder mystery, written by British TV presenter and comedian Richard Osman. It is laugh-out-loud funny at times, though it’s hard to know how well that humour travels beyond UK borders, so it may be worth reading a sample before committing. It’s a light and enjoyable read, set in an upscale retirement village, with the upshot that many of the main protagonists are aged 70+, which is oddly empowering.
“Really, what makes it is Chandler’s prose—it’s the original use of language, the descriptions, and the interior monologue of Marlowe. Telling it in the first person was a great way to bring out Marlowe’s characters, his cynicism, his despair, but also his incredible wit. I love stories where you get so fully immersed into the head of the main protagonist you see everything through his point of view. It creates this bond between the character and the reader where you just want to follow this guy wherever he goes.” Read more...
David Baldacci, Novelist
The Cuckoo's Calling
by Robert Galbraith
The Cuckoo's Calling introduces Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling's detective Cormoran Strike. How does he compare to other literary detectives? In our experience, there are (broadly) two types of literary detective. The first type are patently ludicrous, but a lot of fun. Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot are among the best known examples, but Simon Brett's Charles Paris or MC Beaton's Agatha Raisin are also wonderfully ridiculous detectives. The second type aim to be 'real' characters. We are still expected to suspend disbelief, but there's a basic aim to make a believable character we can identify with. In that aim, crime novelists rarely succeed. One detective might like jazz, another poetry, but they're pretty generic. Not so Cormoran Strike. He is a memorable detective, with a character that sticks with you (in our mind, he looks like the actor Robbie Coltrane).
As the first in the series, The Cuckoo's Calling is one of the best, also introducing Robin Ellacott, the Yorkshire woman who starts the book as Strike's temp. In the audiobook, actor Robert Glenister is excellent at narrating her Yorkshire accent and, like Strike, she seems like a real person.
“It’s described as the godfather of the modern psychological thriller. Everyone who writes psychological thrillers must acknowledge Patricia Highsmith at some point…What appealed to me most about this book is that Tom Ripley is the ultimate sociopath, and yet we’re rooting for him.” Read more...
The Best Psychological Thrillers
J.S. Monroe, Thriller and Crime Writer
“This book is just so well crafted. Everything seems to be building up against the two women, that it looks as if they really did kidnap this girl, and keep her locked in the attic – and how on earth are they going to get out of it? It’s just very, very well done. The Daughter of Time was a classic, where her detective goes out to prove that Richard III didn’t kill the Princes in the Tower, but The Franchise Affair remains my favourite. It’s just lovely writing.” Read more...
M C Beaton, Thriller and Crime Writer
“I could have picked the first Sherlock Holmes collection as well. I could have picked The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is brilliant. I could’ve picked anything Sherlock Holmes. But if someone said to me, ‘You can only reread one Sherlock Holmes story’ that first story in The Return would be the one for me. It’s both a brilliant locked-room mystery and you have Holmes returning. It’s great.” Read more...
Stig Abell, Journalist
“A lot of people love the later Christie, I like the early ones. This one is from 1936. It’s set at an archaeological dig. There’s a plan of the dig and where everyone’s rooms are. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody, but it’s quite a neat solution. It’s a good problem-solving one…It’s a good setting. It’s a finite group of people who are suspects. I like the way it’s written. Her framing devices are really good—there’s not just a straightforward narrator. I love Hercule Poirot more than Miss Marple. I think Poirot is a more interesting figure. And I do have a fondness for the dramatic resolution. The ‘I’ve gathered you all in the room together and this is when I point the finger at the person who did it.’ The neatness of it is really appealing.” Read more...
Stig Abell, Journalist
“The conceit behind the central character is magnificent. He’s called Travis McGee and lives in a boat called the Busted Flush in Florida. He wants to have his retirement while he’s still young enough to enjoy it. He’s this charming knight errant. People who have things stolen from them, who can’t get legal recourse, come to him. He says, ‘I’ll get it back for you, but I’ll take half the value.’ That’s how he earns money, and that enables him to live this beach bum lifestyle. Each book has a colour in the title and each one is an attempt to recover something. He’s an environmentalist, which has dated well. He’s constantly bemoaning the building up of the Everglades and environmental pollution in Florida. His best friend, who helps him in Darker than Amber, is called Meyer and lives on a boat called the John Maynard Keynes.” Read more...
Stig Abell, Journalist
“I’d never read Ngaio Marsh at all until about a year ago. Her inspector is brilliant. He’s called Roderick Alleyn. He’s very wry. He’s highly educated and is constantly quoting Shakespeare. He’s got a lovely relationship with his colleagues in Scotland Yard. Ngaio Marsh had a lot of experience in the theatre, so quite a lot of her novels are set there, including this one. She’s very good on what actors were like in the 1920s and 30s. They were horrors, many of them. The idea of the awful luvvie is brilliant in these books.” Read more...
Stig Abell, Journalist
“Gaudy Night is a beautiful love story. I love the relationship between Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I just think it’s magnificent. I love the fact that he’s this damaged man who some people dismiss as a posh twit. He suffered during the First World War, he has post-traumatic stress syndrome, and is in love with this woman who he once saved from being hanged for murder in an earlier book. It’s part of a series and that’s important. The setting in Oxford is brilliantly done. It’s charming. It’s very restful in parts. Nothing that bad happens for large chunks of it, so it’s quite soothing in that regard. All these things together epitomize what I love in the crime genre.” Read more...
Stig Abell, Journalist
The Best Classic Crime, recommended by Stig Abell
The crime book genre is massive and caters to all sorts of tastes, but once you find a detective or main character you love, there are few pleasures greater than reading the entire series. British journalist Stig Abell, author of Death Under a Little Sky, picks some of the best classic crime, books he’s read over and over again.
