66 books like Ceremony

I regard The Friends of Eddie Coyle as the best American crime novel of the 20th century. 

This noir Friends is a fast-moving slither through Boston’s underworld with its colorful cast of bank robbers and victims, cops, and informers, and, above all, Eddie “Fingers” Coyle. Facing a long prison stretch, Coyle, a small-time gunrunner, is willing to do anything, including informing on a fellow armorer, to stay on the street. 

Told largely through realistic dialogue Higgins picked up as a federal prosecutor, Friends had huge influence, including on crime-novel master Elmore Leonard. I find that the novel passes the ultimate test of a great book: it not only bears but invites re-reading, rewarding me each time with something I had not previously seen in this short but beautifully layered novel.

I think that this novel is a must-read for aspiring writers of crime fiction.

Here’s another PI series set in Boston, and while Carlotta Carlyle is nowhere near as well-known as Spenser, Linda Barnes is every bit as readable as Robert Parker. In her first outing (an Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel), ex-cabbie and ex-cop Carlyle takes on a missing person case that has her tangling with IRA gunrunners. A Trouble of Fools is my pick because it brings the ‘80s Boston I remember to life, and because of the light, humorous voice Barnes lends the proceedings.

The newest book on this list is the first in the Hester Thursby series about a diminutive Harvard librarian turned sleuth. Those expecting a cozy mystery based on that character description should brace themselves because Hill’s debut has more in common with Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels than the typical “librarian investigates” yarn. I feel a personal connection to this one because it was published at the same time as my book and I did my first event for that book with Hill, but rest assured, Little Comfort and the rest of the Thursby series are tremendous reads.

Early Autumn made me cry from two directions. As a tween, reading about Spenser’s rescue of Paul, a shut-down, emotionally neglected boy that Spenser first assesses as “an unlovely little bastard”, I cried in sympathy and relief for Paul.

Over a summer, Spenser taught him skills, built up his strength and gave him the confidence to find his own dreams, before leaving him at the doorway to the life he now knew he wanted. As an adult, I cried with joy for Spenser, who connected with a stranger, taught what he had to teach, and changed a life.

Really helping someone in a lasting way is rarely so easy as it was in this book, but it’s a worthwhile dream and this Cinderella story gets me every time.

Spenser is a hard-nosed private detective living and working in Boston. When his girlfriend Susan runs off to California with another man, Spenser feels betrayed but understands. She has her freedom. Then his best friend, Hawk, is falsely arrested and jailed in the new man’s town. This sets off a firestorm of murder and violence as Spenser first frees Hawk and then they both attempt to free Susan from an abusive, if consensual, relationship. And then the CIA gets involved. A Catskill Eagle is the twelfth of forty Spenser novels written by Parker.

Robert B. Parker’s Cold Service is one of my favorite Spenser novels because it provides more insight into the character Hawk. Hawk is in the hospital, three bullets in his back from trying to protect a bookie from the Ukrainian mob. The Ukrainians are spreading their turf from NYC to the Boston area (a town called Marshport). Spenser comes to the rescue, and the two men take on the impossible task of defeating the Ukrainian mob and their Afghani heroine-dealing overlords while avenging Hawks shooting. Alone, Hawk can’t deal with the thought of showing weakness and Spencer ponders his mortality. Together Spenser and Hawk appear to be invincible. Their code allows them to engage in brutality and come out as likable characters. The way in which Parker spins a tale using simple dialogue is ingenious. His main characters Spenser, Hawk, and Susan Silverman are a joy to get to know… show more.

Street names, the Charles River, bridges, the Back Bay, the Public Gardens, actual hotels and restaurants—Robert B. Parker’s forty Spenser novels make Boston so much a character that Parker wrote Spenser’s Boston. The sixth novel in the series, published in 1980, has Spenser searching for a missing lesbian activist who’s been kidnapped by an anti-gay group. Like Buffalo, Boston sometimes gets a lot of snow. Unlike Buffalo, which is not the snowiest city in New York but is depicted as such, Boston is not known as a snow capital. That Spenser must search during a blizzard is a welcome dose of realism.

Gone Baby Gone is book 4 in Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series. As private detectives, Gennaro and Kenzie are a top-notch investigative team and the story itself is one that will suck you in from the start. It keeps you guessing with its mix of characters, reliable, and unreliable, upfront and in the shadows. It’s my kind of story and one I often referred to while writing my book. Beyond the story of a missing girl, Lehane uses the relationship between Gennaro and Kenzie as a subplot. The friction, the conflict, the barriers in their personal life continue to give the reader angst even after the facts are uncovered. Gone Baby Gone is a suspense story that doesn’t just solve a crime, but also takes the reader into the lives of the investigators, questioning their morality, their decisions and ultimately asking the reader, is the truth always worth… show more.

Lehane, one of my favourite authors, introduces the crime writer’s device of the duo, in his first Kenzie and Gennaro novel. For me, as in my own DCI Steel novels, the duo in writing can work to inform, or mislead, the reader and, if handled well, the reader doesn’t notice, seeing the interaction between characters as normal. Clichés abound in crime fiction, especially in lead characters, but Lehane avoids this with P.I. Patrick Kenzie, and his lifelong friend, Angie Gennaro. Given the area they inhabit, with its racial and gang tensions, added to the clients they have, clichés would seem unavoidable, but—once again—the lesson here is to write multi-faceted characters, which Kenzie and Gennaro emphatically are. They are flawed, but in Lehane’s hands, triumphantly human, and very believable.