57 books like Gallows View

Dead Man's Grave introduces DS Max Craigie and DC Janie Calder, along with the wonderfully irascible DI Ross Fraser.

This book combines not only an extremely good detective yarn with excellent procedure, in a beautiful location, it also does a very good job of setting up the premise for the rest of the series.

The author is a former Metropolitan Police detective, and although the location is Scotland, it is full of authentic police procedure. This book (and the series as a whole) has a well-balanced mixture of crime, police procedure, and well-developed characters with a generous splash of humour.

The first in the Matilda Darke crime thriller series.

I love the straight-up tone of Michael’s writing in this series. It’s fast, direct, and emotionally involved. He also provides plots which are absorbing and which differ markedly from one book to the next.

Matilda Darke herself is a complex character, with an equally complex life, and a varied circle of friends and colleagues. Throughout the series she is put through all kinds of hell. And there are already 11 books, so that’s plenty of hell!

Set in Sheffield, a city in the north of England, these are authentic, contemporary crime novels that you will not want to put down.

Dominic wrote two very good crime books in a short series before publishing Vine Street.

I am including Vine Street on my list because, although it’s set in London and is therefore not ‘regional’, it was one of the great crime novels of 2021-22 and deserves to become a classic. I read this book before it was published, and I knew, like everyone else, that it was something special.

The story spans almost a century, from the seedy streets of London’s Soho in the 1930s, until the present day. There are some really well-researched and vividly depicted descriptions of police investigations in the 30s, and just for that it’s worth a read. But there’s also a twisting, mesmerizing plot that takes us all the way to the present.

What really distinguishes Vine Street, though, is the writing itself, which seems to echo the rhythms of the 1930s jazz clubs, and… show more.

Based in Bradford, in the north of England, Liz’s fiction is gritty and really conveys the realities of this multi-racial, post-industrial city (I grew up a few miles away).

I’m listing Last Request because it was the first book by Liz that I read. But apart from the 6 books in the DS Nikita Parakh series, she’s also written eight novels (so far!) in the DI Gus McGuire series. There’s lots of inner-city grime in the writing, but also issues such as racial tension and mental health.

More importantly, I think, is that the writing has a compelling kind of humanity, with vulnerable, imperfect characters put into impossible situations. She’s just a natural storyteller.

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.

This is the first book in George’s twenty-one book series featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton, and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, a commoner.

When I read A Great Deliverance, I fell in love with George’s beautiful writing, found her two characters fascinating, and adored the cast of characters supporting the detectives. Plus, the book is unusual because the reader knows from the start who the killer is and the investigation focuses on why she killed him.

When I sat down to write my first ever fiction, Linley and Havers were the inspiration for my two detectives, NYPD Detectives Chiara Corelli and P.J. Parker. And I learned from George that the characters are as important, if not more important, than the plot. She inspired my writing.

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.

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.

This is the seventh book in the Dales Detectives series and, in spite of some of the serious issues covered, is by far the most humorous and action-packed.

What I love about this book is the tremendous sense of community that leaps from the pages and really makes you think about small-town/village life. The quirky characters are all well-drawn and vivid descriptions of wayward sheep, fellside walks and twisty lanes bring the Yorkshire Dales to life.

The characters all come together in a wild west style climax which is some of the best writing I’ve ever read. How I’d love to have a beer with them all in The Fleece.