Fans pick 100 books like A Cold Day in Paradise

I loved that the protagonist of Superior Justice is an unorthodox Lutheran pastor who loves fly fishing and a great cup of coffee maybe a bit more than the job he’s paid to do. While he’s not slack in performing his preaching and counseling, he does tend to have heavier things on his mind. Like the fact that one of his parishioners is in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Finding a way to prove that to the police and courts may be the death of him. 

Unlike his namesake, Jonah doesn’t run away when the going gets tough. While this story deals with murder and other crimes, the writer’s use of light humor and romance woven throughout is a gentle respite from the otherwise dark, suspenseful thread.

The Lake Superior backdrop and surrounding area are so familiar from personal visits that it seemed like I was walking around in the book. I enjoyed the sense of place as much as the mystery. 

A young journalist struggling with the age-old problem of leaving his job at the office when he’s home with his family finds that the news stops for no man. He’s soon caught up in the mystery of why a native American woman came to town just to throw herself off a cliff over Lake Superior. Town politics, an elite family with enough power to squelch any gossip, and his own mother try to divert his attention from the story, but a newsman needs to know.

This is the first book I’ve read by William Kent Krueger, but it made me want to read the whole series. Set during a miserably cold winter in the northeast corner of Minnesota, a stone’s throw from Lake Superior, this mystery about a brutal murder and a missing native American boy will make you fear frostbite just from turning pages. 

Cork O’Connor is a complicated character in a seemingly downward spiral. Once the sheriff of this small town, he’s since lost his wife, his job, and is worried about losing his children. His mixed heritage of Irish and Ojibwe makes him see things a little differently than the new sheriff, but not having a badge won’t stop him from taking action when people he cares about are in danger.

I really enjoyed this story even though it isn’t exactly the kind of mystery I normally choose. At the center is a rather eerie vein of darkness, but the beautiful winter scenes of Minnesota, neighbors who care about one another, and a budding romance, tend to lessen the impact. It’s rather a heartwarming story with a ghoulish murder mystery attached.

A woman returns to her hometown to open a bed-and-breakfast in the old mansion that has been in her family for generations. One wing of the house is blocked off and she wants to open it up for her personal living quarters. Cue scary noises and sudden chilly drafts.

This story is also set by Lake Superior in winter, and you get an authentic taste of Northern Minnesota Nice, but inside, the house has a sinister presence that needs Tess to know what happened fifty years ago.

I love the character of Kinsey Millhone because she’s so human and relatable. Her life is messy; she gets herself caught up in situations where she knows she ought to let things drop but just can’t let them go, and she has a kind heart. She also has the endearing quality of being self-deprecating and not taking herself too seriously.

This book is set in the 1980s, and I enjoy seeing Kinsey’s legwork to solve her case without the benefit of mobile phones or the internet. I also love her relationship with her elderly neighbor and how protective she is of him when she feels that new people in the neighborhood are taking advantage of him.

Did you know that Ray Bradbury wrote mysteries? He wrote a few toward the end of his career, and they’re set in the deeply weird world of Southern California, which immediately makes them off-kilter. Death is a Lonely Business follows a nameless protagonist—a writer, by the way—who gets drawn into a mysterious series of…Disappearances? Murders? Perhaps just bad luck? Filled with noir-inspired settings but with that ineffable Bradbury twist of the fantastic, this is a book for late nights and nostalgia. Strange and puzzling, and always ready to twist your expectations.

Supernatural Thrillers: Every Dead Thing by John Connolly is the first novel in Connolly’s Charlie Parker series (it contains Parker’s origin story). If you like your thrillers with a blood-curdling slice of the supernatural, run, don’t walk, to the nearest bookstore and pick up this novel. Haunted by his dead wife and daughter, Parker is an ex-cop turned private detective. And the cases Parker works—Good Lord!—best sleep with the lights on. Though John Connolly’s an Irish lad, his Parker novels take place along the East Coast (Parker lives in Portland, Maine). You’ll realize how literary and poetic Connolly’s prose is as the hairs on the back of your neck begin to rise and you refuse to investigate that sound you just heard coming from the basement.

Hercule Poirot states in this book it is unintelligent and stupid to say a madman murders because he is mad; I love that he looks to the why. Alexander Bonaparte Cust is a complex nuanced and even more importantly, entirely believable character. Even eighty years after this was written the story holds up – it's compelling and fast-paced. I don’t like the random uses e.g. loony and lunatic but given the times (“dastardly scoundrel” is also used!) overall the Queen of Crime did a very solid job of an authentic mentally ill character.

Great follow-up novel in Sanford’s Prey Series concerning a serial female killer. Sanford leaves the reader from a previous prey novel, where the female serial killer escapes.  This leaves his readers with a desire to learn more….a continuing storyline…and he more than satisfies that with her return in Mortal Prey.

This book was an incredible ride all the way through. We have two narrators, one who is clearly dubious and the other is a detective telling the story of how his wife died of a serious illness. The same wife mysteriously turns up at his station asking for him several years after her death.

That premise alone pulled me in, but Weaver has a particular writing style that just flows, and it’s beautiful writing, darkly rich, questioning everything, and a creepy serial killer in the mix. Just the sort of book I love to read!