65 books like In Cold Blood

Dead Man's Grave introduces DS Max Craigie and DC Janie Calder, along with the wonderfully irascible DI Ross Fraser.

This book combines not only an extremely good detective yarn with excellent procedure, in a beautiful location, it also does a very good job of setting up the premise for the rest of the series.

The author is a former Metropolitan Police detective, and although the location is Scotland, it is full of authentic police procedure. This book (and the series as a whole) has a well-balanced mixture of crime, police procedure, and well-developed characters with a generous splash of humour.

The first in Lynch’s long-running DI Kelly Porter series, this book introduces a strongly-written female protagonist, investigating a well-crafted mystery.

This is ideal for readers who want to be transported to a beautiful location (Cumbria and the Lake District). Over the course of the series the characters all grow and develop in interesting ways. I originally started the series three books in and was able to pick up the ongoing storylines with ease, before going back and reading from the beginning.

From a procedural perspective, the books are well-researched and the balance between detail and story-telling is spot-on.

Sergeant Washington Poe and analyst Tilly Bradshaw are top of many folks’ favourites list.

Like Rachel Lynch’s Kelly Porter series, the setting is largely Cumbria. However, Poe and Tilly work for the National Crime Agency, specialising in highly sensitive and unusual cases (eg serial killers), giving a different spin on the police procedural.

Each book has a compelling and devious central mystery, but the real joy is the pairing of Poe and Tilly. Poe is a clever but taciturn grump, who favours the simple life, living largely off-grid in a stone shepherd’s hut. Tilly is a naïve computer genius, with few social filters.

Put them together and initially sparks fly, before they become close friends. With laugh-out-loud dialogue, these are an absolute pleasure to read.

This is an original and timely twist on the classic mismatched-partners story.

An extremely well-crafted police procedural, the central mystery is a missing person investigation. As the first in a series, it expertly sets up a compelling cast of supporting characters, with a well-written, likable, and relatable central protagonist.

The unique selling point is the pairing of DCS Kat Frank with an advanced AI detective that appears in holographic form. The book is set just a few years from now and is in principal entirely possible.

AIDE Lock is very much a work in progress and it’s no spoiler to say that despite Frank’s misgivings, she learns as much from the artificial officer as it learns from her. There are more books planned and I look forward to reading them.

A man found hanging sparks suspicion so, just to check all is okay, the cops hang him again. Well, not him. A stand-in. But it’s a fine little detail that sums up this shrewd book – cold, hard, well-researched, loaded with bold ideas. This is Northern Ireland crime fiction as it should be, the procedural narrative we once struggled to host. Policing took place when cops were pretty much soldiers. Nowadays it’s different. And Dempsey’s crime fiction is second to none. The aftermath of the Troubles – and its socio-political complexity – is sewn in here, used to both enhance tension and amplify relationships. So, a forensic shrink and a cop explore the creepy case of a missing girl after the aforementioned hanging. Get your seat belt on – this thing twists.

Brian McGilloway’s novel is told in the first person from the perspective of a grieving mother who tries to pick through the lies and secrets to uncover what happened to her only child. On her journey she uncovers the brutal truth; everybody lies. The book takes a realistic look at Dora Condron’s emotional descent into a bleak world where she comes to believe that no one will tell the truth. I like most of all that it is crime novel, a mystery, and a family drama that is told from the single perspective. The mother’s introspection about her failings as a parent really hits home when we consider what our own last words might have been to a loved one who walks out the door and never walks back in. 

This is the first in Mark Billingham’s excellent series featuring D.I Tom Thorne. He’s a compelling main character and in many ways the archetypal maverick cop who hates authority. What sets this book apart for me is not so much the antagonist, but the author’s treatment of the victim. She has been forcibly placed in a coma-like state, but fully aware of what’s going on around her. The reality of her locked-in syndrome is heartbreaking.  

Windsor Horne Lockwood III, otherwise known as Win, is Myron Bolitar’s psychotic sidekick in Coben’s long-running series. Win is pure antihero.

He and Myron have been best friends since they roomed together at college. Win is from ‘old money’ and doesn’t try to hide it, he runs Lock-Horne Investments & Security, and is an expert in martial arts and weapons. Other than Myron and Myron’s business partner, Esperanza, and maybe half a dozen others, he has no emotional attachment to humans.

Despite his psychopathy, Win is a very funny character, and his loyalty to his few friends is absolute. Win is the second book on the list in which the sidekick has gotten a book all to themselves and it was a joy to read.

I discovered Kirschman through her non-fiction—a book called I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know—when I was working on my first mystery.

Later I discovered she also writes a darned good story herself. Like this one, featuring Dot Meyerhoff, newly hired police psychologist. Dot’s job? Help the police cope better with their stress—those daily dangers, risks, uglinesses.

First client—Ben Gomez, a rookie who just encountered his first corpse. He strikes Dot as a little too sensitive. When Ben becomes a corpse himself, it looks like another cop suicide. Shouldn’t Dot have seen this coming? But she didn’t.

The secondary theme is significant and well handled: the prevalence of police suicide. I learned a lot. Hint: it’s a cozy, not a police procedural.

U.K. author Stephen Leather has written so many books and in a variety of genres. His supernatural Detective Jack Nightingale series is of interest to me here. In Nightfall and subsequent Jack Nightingale novels, our hero is struggling against demonic forces brought into his orbit courtesy of his now-dead father. Unusual, certainly. Many readers, I suspect, enjoy the injection of a new element into the now-crowded police procedural genre.