10 books like In the Woods

This suspense novel is a leader in the field of deceptive protagonists. Ripley adapts another’s persona alongside his own, but even as he plays both roles he knows that it will all have to end at some point. He is aware of what he’s doing, yet this is coupled with great self-deception: ‘I’m a good person really.’ His vulnerability is shown in his fear of being judged. At heart he is a lonely man, driven by obsession and jealousy. Ripley is a complex, well-drawn character - I’d love to see his personality profile!

Hannibal Lecter. That alone is enough to recommend this brilliant Thomas Harris novel. Red Dragon serves as the literary debut of the iconic psychiatrist/gourmand serial killer. This tense, psychological thriller places FBI profiler Will Graham between the imprisoned but still dangerous Lecter and the titular character who slays entire families under the light of a full moon. The novel opens with Graham on leave and recovering from physical and psychological injuries sustained in Lecter’s capture when the urgency of catching this new killer presses him reluctantly back into service. Graham’s effort to aid the hunt of the Dragon from the shadows is thwarted when Lecter aims the killer at Graham and his family. Wicked fun.

In interviews, Paul Howarth has discussed the ways in which colonial Australia was essentially a second Wild West, albeit one scarcely explored in fiction. Only Killers and Thieves leans into that understanding and in doing so creates a vivid, blood-soaked, Biblical saga about revenge, redemption, and the lies upon which nations are built, full of unforgettable characters and passages of writing that will make your breath catch. That it is followed by an even better sequel is the icing on a magnificent cake.

I first read this novel a long time ago, my freshman year in high school. I read it during English class, hiding Misery inside the class copy of The Catcher In the Rye during “class reading time,” because Stephen King was so much more interesting to me than J.D. Salinger. I love how trapped the main character is (the author Paul Sheldon) in Misery, and I knew that I wanted to create that same feeling with my narrator Cielo—her being trapped in a ruined neighborhood with flooding all around. King creates tension in every single scene, propelling the reader forward and that’s something I aspire to do in my trilogy.)

The Long Goodbye is a weird book and I like weird books. Although it’s cloaked as genre fiction, it is clearly influenced by the non-linear, experimental fiction of the modernist period. The book is full of carnivalesque characters who seem to loom out of the shadows, spinning Chandler’s hard-boiled detective Marlowe around and sending him off in new directions, characters that echo each other like multiplied images in a funhouse mirror, and bizarre detours where tangled subplots weave into the narrative, then unravel as Marlowe is sent caroming off again. In the end, I’m always left wondering how much of the hallucinogenic happenings were real, how much Marlowe even understood what happened, and who was really pulling the strings all along.   

Murakami is a master of misdirection and foreboding. He’s clearly influenced by the hard-boiled detective fiction of Hammett and Chandler. His books often echo elements of the genre. The protagonist of A Wild Sheep Chase finds himself caught in an impersonal system of crime and corruption and driven down strange pathways on a quest he does not fully understand. Murakami takes the hazy, dream-like atmosphere of Chandler’s work and develops it into a kind of magical realist form that leaves the reader with a solved mystery but still wondering what exactly happened.

This book is an astounding work of art. Even though it’s not a mystery novel per se, it has a mystery at its heart so I feel like I can cheat it onto my list. Donna Tartt uses a lot of the elements pioneered by Chandler and Hammett–the criminal underworld, the unreliable friend, the lone figure in a confusing landscape trying to figure it all out and never sure he isn’t being run like a rat in a maze by powers beyond his understanding. At the same time, it’s a coming-of-age story with a quest in the middle of the plot–but a quest that keeps shifting and blurring until the reader ends up questioning whether the supposed objective was ever possible to begin with, or whether the objective was always something else entirely. 

I can’t even tell you how many times in many years working for newspapers that I rushed out after hearing a body had been found in an empty house or neglected alley. In almost every case, I would arrive to have police officers tell me, “No story here. No homicide. Just another overdose.” The newspaper didn’t tally overdose deaths as it did murders, even if many fatalities are linked to heroin that has been mixed with fentanyl without the users’ knowledge. It’s very rare for those who sell the killer substance to face homicide charges. 

The city is basically another character in this book. While the opioid epidemic had touched communities across the country, Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood is widely acknowledged as a disaster zone. A 2018 New York Times article called Kensington is the largest open-air narcotics market on the east coast. 

The plot centers on Philadelphia police officer Mickey… show more.

All Kate Atkinson’s books are beautifully written, with wicked observation, but what I love about them most is the reality of her characters. 

None is more addictive than her detective, Jackson Brodie. I chose this book, not just because it’s the first in the series, but because it moved me so much. I have read it over and over again and each time it makes me cry. I want to take Theo, who still yearns for his murdered daughter, into my arms and comfort him. 

Like me, you will want to know what happened to the little girl who disappeared from her own garden one night and what possessed one woman to kill her husband with an axe. 

Through it all runs a subtle humour, which will make you laugh out loud. 

It is, for me, the perfect book.

Without question, the book that made Ellroy a literary celebrity. If it were not for The Black Dahlia, he might never have gotten past midlist sales and could have been forgotten. It’s based on the real-life unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short in LA, 1947. The subject is personal to Ellroy as his mother Jean Ellroy was also murdered in a case that went unsolved. Ellroy’s unforgettable fictional solution to Short’s murder is set against the backdrop of LA in its postwar boomtown years. The writing is so visceral that by the end of the book, the story will feel personal to the reader too.