49 books like A Great Deliverance

When I sat down to write my first novel I knew I wanted to model my characters on George’s Lynley and Havers but I couldn’t even start writing because I had no idea how to structure a novel, particularly a mystery. As fate would have it, George released her book on writing, Write Away, around that time. In it, she described her process with examples from her own books and it was exactly what I needed. This book provided the essential tools I needed to write. 

As a writer I look to Crombie’s Constable Duncan Kincaid/Sergeant Gemma James series for guidance on how to have your characters grow professionally and personally, to age and experience the kind of changes people go through in real life. I recommend book one of the nineteen in the series, A Share in Death, because it sets up the relationship between the two detectives.

I seem to be addicted to long-running series with British detectives, though not all written by British authors, and A Clubbable Woman is the first book in this twenty-one-book series by Reginald Hill.

When I began to write fiction and worked on creating Corelli and Parker, Hill was one of the authors I looked to for inspiration. Although his Yorkshire detectives, the abrupt and rude Detective Superintendent Andrew "Andy" Dalziel and the educated, calm, and well-mannered Detective Sergeant Peter Pascoe, did not fit my vision for my own characters, I enjoyed their antics and read the entire series. The books are fun and challenging and this is a great beginning.

If you’re looking to binge a great murder mystery series with futuristic elements, JD Robb’s In Death series should be on your list. This is an auto-buy for me.

I fell in love with Eve Dallas, a New York City Lieutenant from page one. I love the creative mix of future elements (it’s set in 2058) and the in-depth character development of film noire stereotype of a cop on the edge of burnout.

As a homicide cop with a decade of experience, she’s no stranger to unraveling a killer’s motive, means, and opportunity, but when an investigation brings her into the orbit of Roarke, a billionaire with a murky past, her innate moral code and gut instincts are pitted against an irresistible attraction.

This is a fantastic entry into a compelling murder mystery series with a captivating cast of characters that never gets old. 

I very much doubt that Reginald Hill intended Pictures of Perfection to appear on a Best M/M list! It’s a quintessentially English tale with a backdrop of class-based snobbery and the threat to rural life from development. It’s also the sole book in Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe mystery series wherein Hill’s gay detective sergeant, Edgar Wield, takes centre stage. Wield finds more than a missing policeman when he’s sent to the village of Enscombe! Nothing to worry even the most sex-repulsed asexual here although, with hindsight, these stories can seem problematic in other ways: Dalziel is so non-woke. However, it was being a fan of Wield and Hill’s books that got me writing my own gay mysteries, so I’m ever grateful.

When Peter Robinson passed away in 2022, he had written 28 novels in the Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks series.

Robinson needs no introduction here, but I have included him on this list because he sets these novels in a fictional town in the Yorkshire Dales, close to where I grew up, and also because he was very encouraging to me personally when I wrote my first Joe Romano novel.

Whereas the books are very much mainstream crime novels, they also have a literary quality to them. He manages to achieve a fine balance between genre fiction and a more literary style. You often forget that you’re reading crime at all.

The series was also made into TV series (DCI Banks) starring Stephen Tompkinson, which ran for five series, and really captures the essence of the books.

Peter Robinson has managed to create a character, DCI Alan Banks, who remains likeable even though he can be petty, headstrong and displays behavioural traits not expected of a top police officer. We can all empathise with him when he acts in a way that causes him shame and regret.

In Strange Affair he’s become depressed after a devastating fire at his cottage. But he’s shaken out of his lethargy when he gets a telephone call to say his estranged brother Roy is missing and Roy’s girlfriend has been shot dead. 

The clever plot involves Banks digging into his brother’s life and discovering Roy’s dodgy business practices which threaten to engulf Banks whose life is in danger. It’s one of Robinson’s best thrillers.

Here’s a great suspense read from the UK that does everything right. Inspector Alan Banks and his team investigate the theft of a tractor from an area farm—an investigation that leads into a deeper mystery involving a murder, and the disappearance of a young man. Where some detective series tend to peter out and lose steam toward the end of the book, this page-turner keeps up the pace and delivers a very satisfying twist ending.

I was born in a fishing village in Yorkshire and although I live in the city now, I always feel the pull of the sea. This book is a memoir set in Orkney and London. It is about the writer’s struggle with addiction and her recovery – partly through reconnecting to the natural landscape again. Amy’s prose is clean and bright. She constructs sentences with no fat on them. Her descriptions are sharply accurate. I really related to her need to get away from London to find her way back to health. London life is intense and although I love it here, it is a constantly demanding city. Reading this novel reinforced my desire to look at things closely, notice them anew, and to remember to go and visit the sea, whenever I can. 

If you love underdog stories, this one offers a double helping. First, Inspector Witherspoon’s career is threatened by ambitious and unscrupulous men who want to see him fail. Secondly, his household staff are the real heroes, tracking down clues that they cleverly feed to their unsuspecting employer to help him solve murder cases. Each staff member has unique methods for uncovering information, and together they make an effective team. I chuckle at their close calls as they scramble to hide their secret sleuthing from the inspector and the rest of the police force.  

This first novel gives the backstory: what’s at stake for the inspector and his household, plus why his housekeeper (Mrs. Jeffries) is a plausible and capable sleuth.