Here are 100 books that Anatomy of a Killing fans have personally recommended if you like
Anatomy of a Killing.
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Since my childhood reading of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books I’ve been addicted to series. I love the character development, that ability to learn more about your favourite with each new story. Crime thrillers became my preferred leisure reading as an adult and, unsurprisingly my passion when I began a full-time writing career. My background as a retired detective from Ireland’s police force helps me understand the individual stresses on investigators and the strain of maintaining relationships and family life while pursuing suspects and protecting lives. I lived in Dublin for over twenty-five years and enjoy using the ever-changing city as a base for my series.
What attracts me to the series is the relationship between the main character, Cormoran Strike and his sundry accomplices, especially his one-time secretary and now partner, Robin Ellacott.
A wonderful aspect of book four in the series is that we find out more about what motivates Robin to continue taking on dangerous tasks. The parallel storyline of her fraught relationship with her new husband adds to the tension as she, Strike, and their various collaborators work furiously to unmask a killer.
When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike's office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed, and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic.
Trying to get to the bottom of Billy's story, Strike and Robin Ellacott - once his assistant, now a partner in the agency - set off on a twisting trail that…
Since my childhood reading of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books I’ve been addicted to series. I love the character development, that ability to learn more about your favourite with each new story. Crime thrillers became my preferred leisure reading as an adult and, unsurprisingly my passion when I began a full-time writing career. My background as a retired detective from Ireland’s police force helps me understand the individual stresses on investigators and the strain of maintaining relationships and family life while pursuing suspects and protecting lives. I lived in Dublin for over twenty-five years and enjoy using the ever-changing city as a base for my series.
The quest to endure and overcome against seemingly impossible odds is a strong theme with The Highway. I liked that and also that the characters came alive from the first page.
The main character Cassie Dewell’s interaction with those around her keeps you guessing as to whether she is smart or flaky. As a rookie investigator in a rural sheriff’s department beset with corruption she has her work cut out to survive. The stressed interplay of her family and work life ramps up tension when she gets on the trail of a serial killer, snatching his victims from highways and truck stops. The plot is compelling and you hold your breath as you leaf through each page. If page-turning crime thrillers are your thing, I recommend The Highway.
When two sisters set out across a remote stretch of Montana road to visit their friend, little do they know it will be the last time anyone might ever hear from them again. The girls—and their car—simply vanish. Former police investigator Cody Hoyt has just lost his job and has fallen off the wagon after a long stretch of sobriety. Convinced by his son and his former rookie partner, Cassie Dewell, he begins the drive south to the girls' last known location. As Cody makes his way to the lonely stretch of Montana highway where they went missing, Cassie discovers…
Since my childhood reading of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books I’ve been addicted to series. I love the character development, that ability to learn more about your favourite with each new story. Crime thrillers became my preferred leisure reading as an adult and, unsurprisingly my passion when I began a full-time writing career. My background as a retired detective from Ireland’s police force helps me understand the individual stresses on investigators and the strain of maintaining relationships and family life while pursuing suspects and protecting lives. I lived in Dublin for over twenty-five years and enjoy using the ever-changing city as a base for my series.
Silver brims with wonderful scene setting in rural Australia—you can almost smell the barbeques and hear the cockatoos. What I like about the main character, Martin Scarsdale, is that he’s prepared to go places and take chances where others fear to tread. A journalist rather than a detective, he uses his journalistic nous to solve crimes with which the police struggle. His motivation is his innate desire to expose the truth, especially when others are trying to conceal it.
If you enjoy crime thrillers with colourful characters and plots with lots of twists and turns, Silver is for you.
A HOMECOMING MARRED BY BLOOD Journalist Martin Scarsden returns to Port Silver to make a fresh start with his partner Mandy. But he arrives to find his childhood friend murdered - and Mandy is the prime suspect. Desperate to clear her name, Martin goes searching for the truth.
A TERRIBLE CRIME The media descends on Port Silver, compelled by a story that has it all: sex, drugs, celebrity, and religion. Martin is chasing the biggest scoop of his career, and the most personal.
A PAST HE CAN'T ESCAPE As Martin draws closer to a killer, the secrets of his traumatic…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Since my childhood reading of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books I’ve been addicted to series. I love the character development, that ability to learn more about your favourite with each new story. Crime thrillers became my preferred leisure reading as an adult and, unsurprisingly my passion when I began a full-time writing career. My background as a retired detective from Ireland’s police force helps me understand the individual stresses on investigators and the strain of maintaining relationships and family life while pursuing suspects and protecting lives. I lived in Dublin for over twenty-five years and enjoy using the ever-changing city as a base for my series.
The Dentist features a great plot and a uniquely different main character.
The main character, DS George Cross, is socially awkward and frequently comes across as rude in his interaction with people, including colleagues. Nonetheless, his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of leads others ignore make him a compelling protagonist. This police procedural keeps the reader guessing whether George’s single-mindedness is indicative of his autism spectrum diagnosis or inspired genius. His consistent logical approach to investigating leads brooks no deviation just because important figures might get snared. The Dentist is a great start to a promising crime thriller series.
Bristol detective DS George Cross might be difficult to work with - but his unfailing logic and determined pursuit of the truth means he is second to none at convicting killers.
THE CRIME
When the police dismiss a man's death as a squabble among the homeless community, Cross is not convinced; there are too many unanswered questions.
Who was the unknown man whose weather-beaten body was discovered on Clifton Downs? And was the same tragedy that resulted in his life on the streets also responsible for his death?
I grew up in one of America’s most heavily Irish areas, outside Philadelphia. After Northern Ireland exploded in 1969, IRA gunrunning cases made the local news, and came up in conversations – one friend told me his ancestors smuggled weapons in the 1920s. So I was hooked when I ran across a vivid 1922 account of an IRA shooting in Manhattan, splashed on the front page of The New York Times, my employer. My first book was about Irish rebel gunmen, the Molly Maguires of the Pennsylvania coal fields, where my Irish ancestors were miners. I’ve given lectures about the IRA’s American activities at conferences in Cork and California.
A comprehensive history of the IRA from the 1916 Easter Uprising to the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles in the 1970s.
Bell did extensive research, interviewing many IRA veterans, and he offers insights on the organization’s high points and low points, of which there were many. What I liked best, though, was Bell’s writing – his words bring these people and events to life.
The Secret Army is the definitive work on the Irish Republican Army. It is an absorbing account of a movement that has had a profound effect on the shaping of the modern Irish state. The secret army in the service of the invisible Republic has had a powerful effect on Irish events over the past twenty-five years. These hidden corridors of power interest Bell and inspired him to spend more time with the IRA than many volunteers spend in it. This book is the culmination of twenty-five years of work and tens of thousands of hours of interviews. Bell's unique…
I grew up in one of America’s most heavily Irish areas, outside Philadelphia. After Northern Ireland exploded in 1969, IRA gunrunning cases made the local news, and came up in conversations – one friend told me his ancestors smuggled weapons in the 1920s. So I was hooked when I ran across a vivid 1922 account of an IRA shooting in Manhattan, splashed on the front page of The New York Times, my employer. My first book was about Irish rebel gunmen, the Molly Maguires of the Pennsylvania coal fields, where my Irish ancestors were miners. I’ve given lectures about the IRA’s American activities at conferences in Cork and California.
The subtitle of this rollicking yarn tells you all you need to know: “An Incredible True Story of IRA Pirates.”
In March 1922, a daring crew of Cork rebels took to the high seas and hijacked a Royal Navy ship packed with 120 tons of guns and ammo. This bloodless act of piracy caused an uproar in London and Dublin, and altered the course of the Irish Civil War. The book is extensively researched, and Mahon knows whereof he speaks – his grandfather was the head of the Cork IRA.
I loved this one because it is set in the same locale and era where part of my book is set, and it features some of the same characters.
A 'sensational affair.. carried out with great audacity' - New York Times. An astonishing act of piracy, the capture of the British war ship, the Upnor changed the course of Ireland's Civil War. Flawless in its planning and execution, while Winston Churchill remarked on Irish 'genius for conspiracy', a furious Michael Collins accused the British of deliberately arming his enemies. Indeed, it's highly likely that the bullet that killed him originated in the Upnor.
The Ballycotton Job brings this riveting story to life, its cast of disparate characters and strands of adventure beautifully woven together. This book sees events leading…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
From an early age, I was steeped in stories. My mother is a great storyteller and would tell vivid and exciting stories of her childhood, giving me a great sense of my own life as a part of the story of generations. We moved around a lot for my father’s job, which was sometimes disorientating and could lead to loneliness, and I took refuge in libraries and in writing stories of my own. By the time I left school, literature was my big love and mainstay, and I took a degree in English and later taught it in schools. Reading and writing stories has since become my life.
I find so true this depiction of a family cruelly affected by their father’s grim past as an IRA commander, which has turned him into a strict, even cruel, disciplinarian.
I shuddered with empathy with the children and wife and rejoiced in the eventual escape of the sons he beat while still, in the end, feeling for him and his loss of their love.
I read it years ago, and it always stayed with me, so I recently recommended it to my reading group and read it again. I was no less moved.
One of my fondest childhood memories is the holiday parties that my parents threw. Lying in bed I could hear roars of laughter crash the silence and gently ebb as the grownups shared stories and made merry. Later in life, I came to realize how different that kind of drinking is from the frat-boy binging of college and the anxious bracers at singles’ bars. As an adult, I became a Catholic theologian, got married, and had a family of my own. My wife Alexandra and I have relished an evening cocktail together in order to unwind and catch up on each other’s day (Alexandra has homeschooled all six of our children, which is itself a compelling reason to drink daily).
Philip Greene is probably the world’s greatest living cocktail historian (how cool is that?). I am personally grateful to him for correcting and guiding my own work. Greene has written several excellent cocktail books. In To Have and Have Another, he canvases Hemingway’s personal preferences as well as the drinks featured in his writings. I hope that Greene one day does something similar with Evelyn Waugh and his novels, though it may fill several volumes.
Ernest Hemingway is nearly as famous for his drinking as he is for his writing. Throughout his collected works, Papa's sensuous explorations of the delights of imbibing engaged both his characters and his readers.
In To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion, Philip Greene, cocktail historian, spirits consultant, and cofounder of the Museum of the American Cocktail, offers us a view of Papa through the lens Papa himself preferred—the bottom of a glass.
A bartender’s manual for Hemingway enthusiasts, this revised and expanded volume offers a unique take on Hemingway’s oeuvre that privileges the tastes, smells, and colors…
I grew up in one of America’s most heavily Irish areas, outside Philadelphia. After Northern Ireland exploded in 1969, IRA gunrunning cases made the local news, and came up in conversations – one friend told me his ancestors smuggled weapons in the 1920s. So I was hooked when I ran across a vivid 1922 account of an IRA shooting in Manhattan, splashed on the front page of The New York Times, my employer. My first book was about Irish rebel gunmen, the Molly Maguires of the Pennsylvania coal fields, where my Irish ancestors were miners. I’ve given lectures about the IRA’s American activities at conferences in Cork and California.
We know from the start that the British prime minister survived the IRA bomb explosion at a Conservative Party conference in Brighton, but that doesn’t lessen the tension in this fine history of the incident.
Rory Carroll gives us nuanced portraits of Thatcher and the bomb maker who tried to kill her. This tale of an overseas attack by the IRA really resonated with me because that’s what “Ambush at Central Park” is all about – and my book includes a chapter about the involvement of some of the IRA gunmen in New York in a plot to assassinate members of the British Cabinet more than sixty years before the explosion that nearly killed Thatcher.
A race-against-the-clock narrative that finally illuminates a history-changing event: the IRA’s attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and the epic manhunt that followed.
A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded at 2:54 a.m. on October 12, 1984. It was the last day of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in the coastal town of Brighton, England. Rooms were obliterated, dozens of people wounded, five killed. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in her suite when the explosion occurred; had she been just a few feet in another direction, flying tiles and masonry would have sliced her to ribbons.…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
I was a teenager when I discovered that my grandfather was an Irish rebel during the War of Independence. As a Canadian, I was astounded by the stories he told me when we were alone during my first visit to Dublin. At 16, I promised him I would write a book about him. Alas, he was long gone when I got started. Researching, I would think of him, whispering anecdotes to me he never told his children. I discovered the stories were much worse than he let on. I could not stop until I got the whole story down on paper. I think he is smiling.
I love this story because it is a time portal that swiftly deposited me in the streets of Dublin just before the Easter Rising. I could see the dirty streets and poverty and feel the hunger for change, for freedom from occupation, that was palpable in the air. I watched the unbelievable and fantastic display of doomed, deadly belligerence against the British.
I love the intensity and rawness of the author’s changing outlook. From a disinterested privileged medical student to a hard-core rebel, abandoning his bright future, he leads men across the wilds of Ireland in tasks he would rather not undertake. I love that he tells this with such a poetic turn of phrase that I can feel the grass underfoot as the men walk and my stomach churning as they take aim.
More than any other book of the period, On Another Man's Wound captures the feel of Ireland―the way people lived, their attitudes and beliefs―and paints brilliant cameo sketches of the great personalities of the Rising and the War. Like many of the Irish, O'Malley was largely indifferent to the attempts to establish an independent Ireland―until the Easter Rising of 1916. As the fight progressed his feelings changed and he joined the Irish Republican Army.
