31 books like Hawksmoor

I often ask what the nature of laws and authority is. In the "Old West," when there was no overarching central authority, the survival of the fittest was the law. I’m curious how the clash of the old world with the new becomes a never-ending cycle and where it may lead.

I loved how none of the characters were all good or all bad, they were just survivors. This book is not meant to be liked or disliked. It’s meant to be experienced and "danced with."

I’m a huge fan of Dickens but this was a serendipitous Covid discovery.

In 1841, Dickens set his tale at the time of the 1780 Gordon Riots. I hadn’t realised how virulently anti-Catholic they were, nor how violent, the most destructive in the history of London. Barnaby himself, a vulnerable ‘innocent’, is sympathetically drawn. Above all the descriptions of the riots are so real that I found myself wondering if Dickens had spoken to somebody who had witnessed them in his youth – which would have been perfectly possible.

This is as vivid a depiction of what it feels like to be caught up in violent insurrection as you’re likely to find anywhere. You’ll also find out the origin of the ‘Dolly Varden hat’ along the way.

For comfort reading, I like period children’s stories, as written by, say, E.Nesbit, Noel Streatfield, Richmal Crompton. Childhood seems to have been more fun when it came up against the constraints of an adult society more formal than our own. Gillian Avery’s achievement was to write spirited historical children’s stories that have all the social nuance you would find in the above authors. The Greatest Gresham (written in 1962, set in the 1890s) is about the timid children of one family who are brought out of their shells by the bolder kids next door, and it all feels just right. For instance, when the mother of the timid children is out on her ‘calling’ (or visiting) day, they always have tea with the family maids, one of whom habitually reads their fortune in their tea leaves. 

The Go-Between is a haunting, doom-laden book about a naïve boy – Leo – out of his depth when staying with a socially smarter friend in a British country house. It’s set in the heatwave summer of 1911 and made such a big impression on me that I wrote a novel of my own set in that summer. The first line of The Go-Between is famous: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Cue the dissolve into an Edwardian dreamworld that slowly turns nightmarish. 

Did this book give birth to hardboiled literature? No, but I feel it mothered and fathered it. 

Did this book—when filmed in 1941—give rise to film noir? I would say yes or “oui.”

This book lives on in libraries and bookstores, in minds and memories, on screens big and small, as a cultural masterpiece. But please don’t get me wrong about masterpiece. Hammett’s existential story of antiheroic private detective Sam Spade wriggling out of death as he fends off the cagey but crazed pursuers of a worthless “jeweled” bird breathes more deeply, more compellingly every time I re-read it. Through the book, I face the dark—and find the gloom almost charming. 

I don't think there is an author who hasn't at least once wished that he was the one who wrote a book by another author. Ever since I first read Umberto Eco's masterpiece, I wished I had written it. That wish only intensified whenever I reread it—and I did it many times. It is a perfect novel by all standards. It is a superb literary work based on storytelling virtuosity and a colossal erudition.

The detective narrative drive is a background of the main theme—how the Renaissance was borne. No other novel in the history of literature has managed to depict a long-gone century in such an impeccably authentic way. Among many authors who influenced my writing, Umberto Eco is certainly the most prominent.

I’ve rarely found myself rooting so much for a detective. The novel chronicles one man’s lonely and obsessive hunt for a child murderer in 1950s Switzerland. This is a thrilling, fast-paced read, and some of the scenes affected me deeply.

Beyond the plot, however, what I find most compelling are the story’s explorations of the nature of evil and the role of chance in human life. Reason is put to a severe test in this story about a world full of darkness and chaos.

In this male-heavy list, this book refreshingly provides a female protagonist to follow into a maze with no discernable exit. Oedipa Maas is underwater from the outset as she wanders around California, the exact vector and identity of danger never quite clear (though it has something to do with warring, private postal services).

Like many post-modern, maximalist works, there are far too many abstract references to parse at the moment, but the overall ride is a delight just the same.

I’ve read several of this author’s books, so I am familiar with her talent for telling compelling stories. Like all the best reads, I couldn’t put it down from the very first page.

The heroine is a strong woman whose world falls apart at the death of her son and the prospect of his heart being donated to someone else. I loved how the author handled this intensely sensitive subject while keeping the mystery side of the story at the forefront. I liked that there is a creepiness to a few of the characters, too, so you never know for sure who the good guys are.

Flavia de Luce is surely one of the most original—and the most delightful—detective characters ever written. The precocious eleven-year-old lives in a crumbling manor house in the English countryside, with her vague father, beastly older sisters, and faithful retainer Dogger. Her interest in chemistry—and death—tend her get her into trouble on a regular basis. In this book, Flavia is on the scene when the body of the church organist turns up in the medieval tomb of St Tancred, the parish church’s patron saint. Predictably, she sets out to solve the murder, tearing about the village on her faithful bicycle Gladys. Alan Bradley evokes a world—rural England in the 1950s—that many of us would love to return to (in spite of the murders!) and has created an unforgettable heroine. If you enjoy mysteries that make you smile, rather than… show more.