100 books like Hard Revolution

As a reader I simply couldn’t have one book without the other. Detective Cruz is the first female detective in Acapulco and fights for every inch of respect in a police department rife with corruption and misogyny in a country where Mexicans don’t trust the police, feeling that no one cares. But Det. Cruz cares. The recurring theme of so many girls gone missing is her passion which occasionally rises up during other investigations throughout the series. As a writer I enjoyed suspense and danger. Carmen Amato makes you feel the heat and taste the food of Acapulco. Best ever female cop protagonist.

I was excited to read another book with fascinating characters and of course, a great K-9. Nickless’ characters are well-developed and very believable. Her fictional K-9 Clyde is captivating and while he’s technically retired, still has the skillset to help his handler, Sydney Parnell.

I love the character arc with Sydney in each book as she recovers from the traumas of serving in the military. I also love that Nickless had Sydney return home to Denver to work as a railroad police special agent. This is a law enforcement job that I haven’t seen in any other book. I appreciated the thrilling storyline and how Nickless created strong tension that ratcheted up to a suspenseful ending. 

I picked up this book from the shelf of a holiday cottage and was hooked immediately. I love books which interweave personal human stories with big events.

The ordinary loves and lives of the people of Pompeii are unfolding as the mountain above them begins to behave strangely. Of course, we, the readers, know the disaster that is about to occur, which only adds to the suspense. Unputdownable.

Another crime book that takes you places you never thought you’d venture into. Fesperman creates a sympathetic protagonist Vlado Petric. Vlado, a former homicide detective in Sarajevo, lives in exile but is recruited to return to the place of horrors that have haunted his life. His assignment: help capture an aging Nazi collaborator who has become a war profiteer, surrounded by a sympathetic population who will protect him with their lives. The story is dark and filled with suspense and dread. The Balkans were and are a very dangerous place. As a writer Fesperman creates suspense and fear in a very different place with very different people.

This book is about a private investigator in London in the early 1900s. It is the first of a long series about Maisie’s cases and the people who are dear to her.

This first book gives us an introduction to Maisie and her working-class background, the people who influenced her, and the way she uses her own version of second sight to understand both clients and criminals. Her description of Maisie mimicking someone’s body movements to figure out their motives actually made me try it out.

I also got a strong sense of London during the difficult years of wars and depression and a bedraggled peace. If you enjoy this one, you’ll have a nice backlog to return to whenever you need more.

As a multi-genre author, I was interested to see how the creator of a world-famous boy wizard was going to change her name and turn her hand to crime writing. I relished the result: the first outing for a new private investigator, a character called Cormoran Strike.

Known simply as Strike, he is a P.I. with a handicap (aren’t they all?). Not just the common ones; excessive drinking, difficult relationships, and so on, Strike lost half his right leg whilst serving in Afghanistan. Retiring from service, the ex-MP becomes a private investigator. He has few clients, no money, and is scruffy and unkempt because he sleeps in his office. But he does have a motto, "Do the job and do it well."

In social relationships, Strike isn’t a likable character; demanding and sometimes just plain rude. He has lost his last assistant. I warmed to him the more his traits… show more.

Before I read Dorothy L. Sayers’ books, I’d only heard of Strong Poison and Gaudy Night, but as I read through the Lord Peter Wimsey series, I found a favorite 1920s mystery for me, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Wimsey is a veteran of the Great War with an unusual hobby: dead bodies. It might sound creepy, but it isn’t. He’s called on to fix the time of death of elderly General Fentiman, who “pegged it” on Armistice Day. I loved Lord Peter’s droll and self-deprecating attitude. People underestimate him because of his foppish exterior, but he sees what others miss. The investigation touches on PTSD—called shellshock then—in a way that feels timely to me, even after nearly a century. I loved the tour through aristocratic London with Lord Peter.

This book, by Nobel-prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, was the first novel in which I saw a character like myself—someone who grew up in a culture that was very different from his parents'. The mystery plot gets wild, but I found that the main character’s search for closure felt connected to my own nostalgia and grief over the places I’d left behind.

Pelecanos is the worst. Pelecanos is a bum. I hate George Pelecanos. Every time I read one of his novels I get depressed because I will never be as good as him. More modern existential hardcore PI fiction, the third novel in a triology set in DC, this one too blew me away with its vision of DC, which I had just quit for Philadelphia. But it’s not the DC you and I know of marble and monuments, posturing politicians and bright ties, bright young people, and great eateries. Shoegum Nick Stefanos prowls some very mean DC streets and alleys and slimy creeks while battling his own nature. He’s a barkeep, a drunk, a f**up. This novel showed me that thoroughly entertaining nihilistic crime fiction is alive and well. Have I mentioned I hate Pelecanos?

I’ve chosen this final recommendation because it is a little different from the standard religious conspiracy thriller. I love John Case’s writing (actually a husband and wife collaboration). Although The Genesis Code from this pair could be regarded as a better example of the genre, I prefer The Eighth Day because it deviates from the usual strictly Christian or Islamic subject matter. Plus, refreshingly, it doesn’t make the main character a superhero of espionage, an out-of-control academic, or a swaggering investigative journalist. It involves a demonic tribe in the hinterlands of Turkey and a billionaire’s megalomania. Be prepared for some surprising twists! Dark, fast-paced, and full of intrigue.