Here are 73 books that Killshot fans have personally recommended if you like
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Growing up on a diet of The Godfather, The Sopranos, thrillers, and gangster novels, and living in New York City with eye-opening trips to Sicily, I became slightly obsessed with the Mafia. I came to see the American Mafia as a quintessentially American fabric, woven of family, power, immigrants, money, history, loyalty, legacy, and, yes, crime.
A history of the early 1960s in America, leading up to the assassination of JFK, seen through the eyes of the mobsters and criminals, crooked cops, spies, and sleazos who power the machines of history.
A comprehensive romp through the underbelly of American crime and politics (and you might, after reading this book, wonder what’s the difference), it’s a novel about characters you don’t like—but they’re vivid and fascinating.
Much more than a gritty gangster novel, it’s a tale about the people in history’s shadows, and, ultimately, history and the “never innocent” America itself.
The first novel in Ellroy's extraordinary Underworld USA Trilogy as featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read.
1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age - an age that will last until the 1000 days of John F Kennedy's presidency.
Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Pete Bondurant - Howard Hughes's right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa's hitman. Kemper Boyd - employed by J Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell - a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy's drive against organised crime.…
I retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, as a detective assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, but I’ve always been a writer at heart and an avid reader. I graduated from California State University in Long Beach, CA, with a major in Film. I am the author of six crime fiction books, three of which involve retired detective turned PI Frank Marr. This trilogy was critically acclaimed.
George V. Higgins was an Assistant U.S. Attorney who specialized in organized crime. He may not have been a cop, but as a prosecutor, he was responsible for taking a lot of bad guys off the street, so he knew the underworld well.
I have read this book several times. It is inspiring and one of my favorite books of all time. It is a classic example of a totally dialogue-driven book, and it had a huge influence on my writing.
Eddie Coyle is a small-time punk with a big-time problem - who to sell out to avoid being sent up again. Eddie works for Jimmy Scalisi, supplying him with guns for a couple of bank jobs. But a cop named Foley is onto Eddie, and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. These and others make up the bunch of hoods, gunmen, thieves, and executioners who are wheeling, dealing, chasing, and stealing in the underworld of Eddie Coyle.
I’ve been writing crime stories since I was a child. They entertained me and helped me cope with a lot of family strife. My first novel was published in college and sold to the movies, which got me into screenwriting, leading to writing hundreds of hours of TV and fifty novels to date. The one thing all of my stories share is humor because I believe it’s an essential part of life–and of memorable story-telling. Humor makes characters come alive, revealing shades of personality and depths of emotion you wouldn’t otherwise see. Here are five books that taught me that it’s true and that continue to influence me as a writer.
Creative writing instructors (and later TV showrunners and network executives) taught me that the protagonist in a crime story can be flawed, but he has to be likable, someone you want to spend time with and who you will root for.
They were all wrong. The detective hero of this book borders on repulsive, and the world he lives in is dark, violent, and a touch grotesque…but also very, very funny. The humor not only makes it all palatable but somehow even more vivid and powerful. And entertaining, oh, how entertaining.
There may not be a single likable character in the whole book, and I don’t care. I love every word.
After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge,…
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer and Santa Fe journalist, John Blessing, is assigned to report…
I’ve always been a keen reader of crime fiction. A huge fan of both Agatha Christie and PD James in the Golden age of English crime fiction. I love American mystery writers too and have attended Bouchercon in New Orleans. Just after Driftnet was published and the Dr. Rhona MacLeod series launched, I was visiting a Crime Writers’ Association conference in Lincoln with my friend and fellow crime writer Alex Gray. That’s where the idea for a weekend promoting Scottish Crime writing began. When we launched it ten years ago, Ian Rankin said, "Scandinavia doesn’t have better crime writers than Scotland, it has better PR." That’s what we set out to change.
The Long Drop is a Scottish crime book like no other.
It features an imagined night featuring two key figures in the terrible world of one of Scotland’s most notorious murderers Peter Manuel.
In this long night of the soul Peter Manuel and William Watt wander through Glasgow and its underbelly as Manuel leads Watt on a journey of lies, drink, and trickery.
It is Tartan Noir at its most terrifying. A Jekyll and Hyde story of a night based on true events.
'A masterpiece by the woman who may be Britain's finest living crime novelist' Daily Telegraph
'Absorbing... this is a bravura performance, a true original' Ian Rankin
Glasgow, 1957. It is a December night and William Watt is desperate. His family has been murdered and he needs to find out who killed them.
He arrives at a bar to meet Peter Manuel, who claims he can get hold of the gun that was used. But Watt soon realises that this infamous criminal will not give up information easily.
Inspired by true events, The Long Drop follows Watt and Manuel along back…
I’ve always loved “big books,” novels that are described as sagas and chronicles yet whose primary focus is on singular, nuanced characters. I like seeing the ways that lives intersect and reflect each other across decades, and I enjoy being immersed in one world and then dropped, with the turn of a page, into another equally engrossing one. I am the author of the novel Rebellion as well as numerous short stories and essays. Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, I spent several years living in China and a year as the Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. I now live in Wisconsin, where I write and teach creative writing.
I can never decide which of Erdrich’s books is my favorite, but The Plague of Doves is definitely a major contender. Erdrich’s novelistic style is more like a chorus than a solo: she presents various stories involving different characters in different times, but the stories are in orbit around the central conflict, in this case, a pair of horrific crimes committed long ago. Yet even when the content is dark, her writing is so beautiful that my primary feeling reading it is joy. For me, the title of this book perfectly captures that contradictory experience.
A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time, and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012
Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Here, everybody is connected - by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history.
Growing up on the reservation is Evelina Harp, witty and ambitious, and prone to falling hopelessly in love. Listening to her grandfather's tales, she learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites. Nobody understands it better…
I’ve read a lot of noir since I was fourteen; it has influenced everything I’ve written. The imperfect flawed characters, the atmosphere, the similes, and the wrong choices made for the right reasons—my heroes, male or female, always have something to hide and a broken part of them that makes their triumph that much sweeter.
I love Elmore Leonard for the switches and the dialog. By switches I mean, you think it’s going one way, but it goes the other. Swag is great because it seems so plausible. From the meeting of the two protagonists to their bonding and then the events that follow—it all seems natural while you’re in it—but step back, take a birds-eye view, and you see instantly how wacky it is.
Elmore Leonard is 'the man other crime writers call the Boss' DAILY TELEGRAPH.
There aren't any textbooks on armed robbery. The only way to learn is through experience, and small-time crooks Frank and Stick are determined to do as much learning on the job as possible.
In 1970s' Detroit they embark on a crime spree, holding up liquor stores and supermarkets. They invent their 'Ten Golden Rules for Successful Armed Robbery' and for a short time the cash is rolling in. But then they bend their own rules, and it looks like trouble is heading their way...
This book is a spy novel with a satirical edge which will take you on a heart-pumping journey through the streets, mountains, jungles, and beaches of Colombia. Our Man in Havana meets A Clear and Present Danger.
Like many readers, I am drawn to stories of vengeance. Stories of someone seeking revenge have a built-in tension and narrative drive. But as the saying goes, when you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Yes, these tales seldom go smoothly. The consequences of this and the violence that ensues are what I wanted to explore in my latest novel, but several books on my shelf make fascinating stories out of this desire for revenge.
The start of a decades-long run of stellar crime novels about the eponymous main character—a hitman who does not suffer fools. Quarry takes his work seriously, and when the trust between the hitman and the handler is broken, he makes it his mission to track down the culprit.
Collins has spun the series into more than a dozen novels, comprising Quarry’s many assignments, his loves, and his struggles to find honor among criminals. What started in 1976 with this novel continues and shows no signs of letting up.
The assignment was simple: stake out the man's home and kill him. Easy work for a professional like Quarry. But when things go horribly wrong, Quarry finds himself with a new mission: learn who hired him, and make the bastard pay.
NOW A CINEMAX TELEVISION SERIES!
The longest-running series from Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition, and the first ever to feature a hitman as the main character, the Quarry novels tell the story of a paid assassin with a rebellious streak and an unlikely taste for justice. Once a Marine sniper, Quarry found a new home stateside…
I’m a Romanian American author who arrived in the US with a job in software development. In more than twenty years as an immigrant, I’ve struggled with the same problems these novels explore: how to build a home in a new land, away from my family; how to fit in or make my peace with not belonging; how to be the parent of American-born children whose culture is different from my native one. I’m familiar with the US immigration system from my yearslong citizenship application, and I also interviewed an immigration lawyer extensively for my thriller.
In this gripping courtroom drama, an explosion in Miracle Creek, Virginia, destroys the business of South Korean immigrants Pak and Young Yoo and puts their daughter Mary into a monthslong coma. As arguments mount against the woman accused of starting the fire, Young struggles with a question many immigrants must face. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought her child to the US, where Mary struggles as a teenager and where she was almost killed. The tension between the two generations resonated with me as a parent and immigrant. As Young hopes to discover who caused the explosion that killed two other people, she must also help Mary imagine a future in their adoptive country.
'That wonderful, brilliant sort of book you want to shove at people as soon as you've finished so they can experience it for themselves' Erin Morgenstern
A thrilling debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng about how far we'll go to protect our families - and our deepest secrets.
In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine - a pressurised oxygen chamber that patients enter for "dives", used as an alternative therapy for conditions including autism and infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two…
I so love thrillers because they delve into that area of ourselves that can be ‘safely’ afraid and give you that adrenaline rush that nature taught us is fight or flight. Thrillers teach us lessons, too, about people and the psychology of the most dangerous ones in our society. Through reading into this genre, I learned a lot about life before I even lived it, and I learned to recognize the less wholesome traits that humanity can have. What’s fascinating to me most is exploring those dark sides of the human psyche in order to make comparisons on what is right or wrong with some people’s behavior.
This is a psychological thriller with a difference. This story appears to be one thing and is, in fact, something else. Following the path of a struggling working mother with post-natal depression, we see the world through her paranoid eyes.
What I really enjoyed about this book is the unexpected twists and turns. Is she really imagining this, or did she see that little girl on the platform? It makes you question everything, including the motives of those surrounding the main character (always a good thing!). It is a masterpiece of misdirection and an unreliable narrator.
I am the girl on the platform. When new mother Bridget catches her train home from London, she witnesses something terrible: a young girl is taken from the platform, right before her eyes.
No one knows where I am. But no one is reported missing and with Bridget the only witness, she is written off as an attention seeker. Nobody believes her - not even her own husband.
Can you find me? But Bridget knows what she saw, and becomes consumed with finding the little girl. Only she can save the child's life... but…
I grew up in a Jewish home more focused on comedy than religion. I readMad Magazine, watched The Three Stooges, and listened to Allan Sherman. The idea of a bar mitzvah was a cruel surprise, sprung on me at age 10. I flunked Hebrew school, yet got accepted at Yale. I majored in a Jewish girl who later broke my heart. So I began writing my first novel. It "almost" got published—another sad story—and I took a job with an editor in NYC who specialized in paranormal non-fiction. That was the spark for The Violet Crow—and my love for comic crime fiction. A new novel, Reveille in Birdland, is scheduled for completion in 2023.
I couldn't get enough of the character, Rocco Schiavone, from the TV series Ice Cold Murders, so I decided to check out the original novels by Antonio Manzini.They are equally good—or better. Rocco is a police inspector from Rome who gets transferred to Aosta, an alpine ski resort town. In Black Run, Rocco instructs his provincial team in big-city police techniques, including cutting corners and avoiding superiors.He contrives useless errands to get his two dumbest cops out of the office. And he introduces his classification of Things That Are a Pain in the Ass, with "sand in your clams" at Level Seven and "unsolved homicide" at Level 10. Black Runbegins on the slopes, at Level 10, with the discovery of an unidentified corpse mangled by a snowcat.
'He'd almost walked right over it when he finally saw it for what it was: a stain of red blood, churned into the white blanket of snow...'
After getting on the wrong side of the wrong people in Rome, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone is exiled to Aosta, a small, touristy alpine town far from the cobbled streets and fritto misto of his beloved city.
Rocco's talent for solving crimes is matched only by his disdain for the rules and his eye for a beautiful woman. But when a mangled body is found on the ski slopes, he soon discovers…
