Fans pick 28 books like Exit Music

In this book, the author uses a new character Elvira (her character reappears in subsequent books) who leads the reader forward in the first person, a breakaway from the usual (close) third person in the other books in the series. Her voice is so clear, you can’t help but fall in love with her strange quirks. She is a medical student and trained in body combat. Elvira’s sister has been missing for 59 days and she can’t get the police interested enough to take her seriously. Her sister was an adult after all and left with a packed bag. Anderson and Costello eventually do get involved as more and more young women disappear.

The action in this novel is fast and furious. It left me breathless at times. I had to put the book down and walk away a few times near the end it was that intense.

I loved visiting the Shetland isles with world-weary police inspector Jimmy Perez. The islands, the unique culture, weather, and the remoteness were such compelling components of the story. I loved how Ms. Cleeves used Scotland as one of her characters. She created this lush and detailed world that’s eerie and uncomfortable, the perfect setting for a murder mystery.

I’m also a sucker for a grumpy detective, and Jimmy Perez is such an understandably jaded character, but he still has a kind, warm heart under his crusty exterior that comes out when he’s interacting with his more novice colleagues and members of the community. 

This is another murder mystery set in a quintessential English village and where we meet detective Adam Dalgleish for the first time. The day after the church fete, Sally Jupp is found dead in her bedroom, the door locked from the inside. I loved the way tension gradually builds through the story and how expertly each character is drawn. Nobody is who they seem, including the victim.

Grayson Hale claims that the devil made him commit a gruesome murder. This brilliant page-turner kept me guessing whether the blame should fall on the devil or untreated mental illness, given Grayson’s upbringing within a fundamentalist Christian household where he was viewed as evil.

I love psychological horror, so this book was right up my alley as I turned the pages to see whether the murder had a human or supernatural cause. The book beautifully unfolds the story of Grayson’s trauma, shame, and self-loathing as an isolated and marginalized person.

I will say no more about that to avoid spoilers, but I loved how this book kept me guessing and entertained while it provided me with a new understanding and compassion.

This book is close to my heart as it started my writing career. The Death of Lucy Kyte is the fifth book in the Josephine Tey mystery novels based on a true Suffolk crime dubbed The Red Barn murders. I loved the way the book weaved between past and present, and the skill employed by the author in creating a fictional work from an actual historical crime. Not only did it offer me a series of mystery books, which I loved, but it set me on the path to penning my own novels in a similar genre.

The main character, Bruce Robertson, is repulsive. But there’s something deeply funny about a pathologically miserable bastard.

Bruce does and says terrible things, he believes terrible things, he plays sadistic tricks against coworkers (he’s a detective sergeant in Edinburgh). But the thing that really makes me squirm about Bruce is the food he eats and how he goes about eating it. Despite Bruce’s repellent nature, Welsh’s approach to the character is magical.

I was locked in from the first page—I couldn’t look away—and the glints and glimmers of Bruce’s humanity ultimately made my heart break.

Authenticity appeals to me the most. Donna Fletcher Crow shares my love of Celtic Christianity and meticulously researches her deeply evocative settings. She set out to write a nonfiction book about Pilgrimage. It never got written, but the profoundly resonant places she visited inspired A Very Private Grave.

Felicity is studying at a monastery when her favorite monk is bludgeoned to death. Fr Antony is soaked in his blood. Yet soon the two of them are on the run from the murderer. Their flight takes them to some of my favorite places–the holy island of Lindisfarne, Ninian’s hermitage at Whithorn, Hilda’s clifftop monastery at Whitby, Jarrow, that nurtured Bede, and St Cuthbert’s grave in Durham Cathedral. The settings are vividly brought to life, making this book a rich experience.

Thriller writer and contemporary ‘queen of crime’ Val McDermid draws deeply on her own years as a tabloid journalist to bring fictional reporter Allie Burns to life during the winter of discontent. This unputdownable tale of a newspaper investigation into matters of life, death, and corruption is so evocative of a 1970s Glasgow newsroom that I could practically smell the fags and taste the whisky. More Allie Burns stories are promised, and I for one can’t wait.

Although this isn’t the first entry in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series, it’s the first that I read, and it hooked me. What a great idea for an offbeat police series, cleverly handled and featuring two eccentric London detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May. In this mystery, two cases initially appear unrelated, and it takes quite a bit of sleuthing before the links emerge. Bryant and May must unravel encrypted codes and symbols, discover secret rooms and dig through baffling clues as danger mounts. While this series has a darker tone than some of my preferences, it’s engaging and rewarding.

This book is the first in Hiaasen’s Andrew Yancy series, and like all of his books, most of it takes place mucking around in Florida wetlands. I lived in Winter Haven for a few years as a teenager, and enjoyed reminiscing about that time while following Yancy around the state.

Hiaasen’s known for being a little wacky and a lot funny, more than his plot twists, but this book brings the surprise. This one’s funnier than the rest of the books on this list, making it the ultimate beach read, ideally accompanied by a cool glass of swampwater.