100 books like Falconer

Don’t tell anyone, but I love this novel more than Oscar Wilde’s plays. It’s such a fantastic concept: a man whose beauty is marred by his corruption, but thanks to selling his soul in exchange for eternal beauty, all the wickedness appears in his portrait and not on his features.

I find that delicious and chilling in equal measure. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read this book, almost as many as The Hound, I think. And like that book, it brings me back to cold Dublin nights by the fire, longing for London and finding it alive and well between the pages of a book.

What if queer American cannibal killer Jeffery Dahmer met his British equivalent, Dennis Nilsen?

This novel is a fictionalized answer to that question, pairing serial murderers Jay and Andrew in a psychosexual tear through lush New Orleans.

However, my favorites are the other central characters: Luke and Tran, two ex-lovers who are living with HIV, homelessness, and the emotional scars of their bad romance. There is subtle, skillful storytelling showcased in the relationship you only get in retrospect between these two.

It’s so unique that I once taught it to a Master’s degree writing class as an example of rule-breaking and genre-bending to aspire towards.

There are also alluring literary parallels to explore between venereal disease and violent death stalking the unsuspecting gay men of the bayou. Overall, it’s a delightfully depraved masterpiece.

The third of the five-book Riplead series, Ripley’s Game throws a twist on the traditional cat-and-mouse thriller.

The youthful homoerotic panic of The Talented Mr. Ripley has calmed down, and Tom Ripley is now a married man with a château in France. Trouble begins when he plays a game with his neighbor, Jonathan Trevanny—a man with a terminal illness, desperate to leave money to his wife and child. Ripley sets him up for an offer he can’t refuse: murder for hire.

I find the best facet of the novel to be Ripley’s begrudging humanity. He softens enough to help Jonathan when the job of garroting organized crime thugs is too horrible for him to stomach. While not explicitly gay, the queer vibes are strong as Ripley’s growing tenderness for Jonathan helps to humanize him.

We’ll start with another novel (there are many) inspired in part by the Leopold and Loeb crime. This one swaps Chicago for Pittsburgh, and changes their mismatch in IQs for a stark class divide.

One of the variations I most enjoy in this retelling is that university students Paul Fleischer and Julian Fromme are both damaged when they meet. Julian is scarred physically from a car crash in his youth, and Paul is still recovering emotionally from the death of his father.

Additionally, since the book is set in the 1970s, their sexual involvement with one another is more explicit than the original story could allow (though it still comes with social stigma).

A captivating work of dark academia and crime, the obsession between these two compels them to court their own ruin.

One of the common reactions to the death of a loved family member–especially any death we perceive to be unnecessary or unnatural–is extreme anger. We have to blame someone, and yes, there’s plenty of reproach and self-recrimination in John Burnham Schwartz’s novel, Reservation Road. But there’s a clear culprit–a hit and run driver–and it seems the police are hardly bothering to investigate, and in a case like that, anyone would have a target for their helpless rage. We see Ethan, a father who witnessed his ten-year-old son killed, become obsessed with tracking down the perpetrator himself to accomplish some justice. I understand that kind of anger and frustration, and I know many others do, too. I think it’s useful to both accept that it’s normal, but to look at how destructive it can become to carry it, and to consider how to let it go. 

Reservation Road is also… show more.

We move up a generation to the next “classic,” an equally entertaining satire that now sets the American university against the British. Two professors exchange roles for an academic year, swapping not only courses but eventually also students, colleagues, and (spoiler alert!) spouses. You get to look at each place through the eyes of the other—starting with the sunny American campus (based on Berkeley) against the damp British one—which is as jarring as it is revealing. Lodge beautifully melds the academic, the intellectual, and the personal, so the story grips you personally even as it stimulates and entertains. I read this as a graduate student and somehow stayed in the business anyway!

Based on a simple question: “Can a man escape from a high-security prison cell using only his mind?” The Problem of Cell 13 is everyone’s favorite. The story offers a convincing answer and a mind-bending ending you just don’t see coming.

This collection of short stories demonstrates how someone can solve even the most impossible mysteries if one harnesses the formidable power of one’s mind. As I walk mentally side-by-side with Futrelle’s protagonist, Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, I find myself consistently unable to solve each puzzle first.

Unfortunately, Futrelle died young on the Titanic, taking several new stories down with him. At least we can still enjoy what he left behind, one of the greatest collections of mysteries you’ll find anywhere.

This is classic, quintessential British humor, the kind of dry wit that makes you laugh out loud as you’re reading. I didn’t want it to end because of how hilarious I found the main character. Even while being funny, the book does a great job establishing the imposter syndrome the main character feels as a member of the middle class attempting to enter the elite halls of academia as an older graduate student.

He is a fish out of water, incapable of having normal social interactions with his peers, “betters,” or students. Possibly, the best-ever hangover scene in writing occurs in this book. 

Helen McInnes books made their way into my family via those Readers Digest Condensed books that used to come in the mail. They were hard bound and heavy to hold, but it was fun to open them and explore new books. The only one I remember, though, is one by Helen McInnes. I had to go find the complete book because when they condense? You miss a lot. I recommend starting with her first book, Above Suspicion. I loved her characters right off. This isn’t one of those stories that starts with a big bang. The tension rises very slowly and you don’t realize you are being wound up like a spring until it’s too late to put it down. And cool factoid, the author was in the OAS in World War II. She knew her stuff. 

And then there was Campusland… Fast, funny, and brutal in its satirical account of today’s campuses, with their “safe spaces” and identity politics and administrators and students alike running amok, this is a book with an agenda (be forewarned) but which executes that agenda extremely well. Johnston really nails certain character types present on many liberal arts colleges and elite campuses, as well as the dynamics as those characters execute their own agendas. If you share the author’s agenda you will lap it up; if not, you will be enraged; but either way you will be entertained. And if you haven’t been paying attention to the campus scene for a while—prepare to be shocked.