Here are 100 books that Naked Came the Detective fans have personally recommended if you like
Naked Came the Detective.
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I have always had a thirst for mystery and puzzle-solving, which has expanded into books as I've grown. For me, emotions play an important role in any tale. Suspense novels that bring a personal element allow the puzzle to unfold meaningfully. Like slotting the last piece of a jigsaw in place, I want to feel their emotions—the fear that makes their hearts pump in rapid beats. Their sorrow and happiness. I want to know I have been on a journey when I finish. And one, I didn’t travel alone. I hope you, too, go on a journey with the books I have recommended.
This is a twisted romantic suspense that delivers a gripping read.
Romance and suspense merge when a decade-old secret turns deadly. The opening chapter thrust me into the murder of Reagan Asher’s grandmother. Not getting what they wanted, the culprits set their sights on Reagan. Passed events become the premise of this novel, and Reagan must come to terms with her grandmother’s death and her father’s betrayal to stay alive and uncover the truth.
The unpredictable nature of this story was a winner for me.
I have always had a thirst for mystery and puzzle-solving, which has expanded into books as I've grown. For me, emotions play an important role in any tale. Suspense novels that bring a personal element allow the puzzle to unfold meaningfully. Like slotting the last piece of a jigsaw in place, I want to feel their emotions—the fear that makes their hearts pump in rapid beats. Their sorrow and happiness. I want to know I have been on a journey when I finish. And one, I didn’t travel alone. I hope you, too, go on a journey with the books I have recommended.
This is a craftily written tale of murder against the breathtaking backdrop of the Thai Island of Samui (the Land of Smiles). The blend of local traditions and colorful characters lured me in until I could smell the spices and hear the beeping of car horns.
I love characters that are quirky and unpredictable, and private detective David Braddock is just that. He’s a man battling with his past and bad habits, keeping the Chief of Police satisfied and solving the murders before he gets sidelined by his superiors.
'He opens a drawer of his desk, casually takes out a pistol, flicks off the safety catch and points it at my head. He says almost sorrowfully, "Do you imagine me to be a gangster, Mr Braddock?"'
It is January 2005, and the charred remains of two Europeans have been discovered on the Thai island of Samui. Local Police Chief Charoenkul, sidelined by his superiors, enlists the reluctant David Braddock, a burnt-out private detective, to assist in an ‘unofficial’ investigation. But Braddock has problems of his own, including an affair with the same Police Chief’s wife ...
I have always had a thirst for mystery and puzzle-solving, which has expanded into books as I've grown. For me, emotions play an important role in any tale. Suspense novels that bring a personal element allow the puzzle to unfold meaningfully. Like slotting the last piece of a jigsaw in place, I want to feel their emotions—the fear that makes their hearts pump in rapid beats. Their sorrow and happiness. I want to know I have been on a journey when I finish. And one, I didn’t travel alone. I hope you, too, go on a journey with the books I have recommended.
While this may not be classed as a suspense novel, it is just that for me. It is a brutal, honest, and heartbreaking story that lived on long after I finished reading it. Touching on dementia and Down Syndrome, the author weaves a magic web of true understanding and heartfelt emotions.
Irene's strength, sense of responsibility, family, and love for her husband, Sam, make this a beautiful read. For Irene, it isn’t only about coming to terms with the loss of her sister, Rose, but finding out what happened the night that Rose died… and the truth is very different from what Irene thinks she saw.
Mother and daughter tied together by shame and secrecy, love and hate.
I wait by the bed. I move into her line of vision and it’s as though we’re watching one another, my mother and me; two women – trapped.
Today has been a long time coming. Irene sits at her mother's side waiting for the right moment, for the point at which she will know she is doing the right thing by Rose.
Rose was Irene's little sister, an unwanted embarrassment to their mother Lilian but a treasure to Irene. Rose died thirty years ago, when she was eight,…
I have always had a thirst for mystery and puzzle-solving, which has expanded into books as I've grown. For me, emotions play an important role in any tale. Suspense novels that bring a personal element allow the puzzle to unfold meaningfully. Like slotting the last piece of a jigsaw in place, I want to feel their emotions—the fear that makes their hearts pump in rapid beats. Their sorrow and happiness. I want to know I have been on a journey when I finish. And one, I didn’t travel alone. I hope you, too, go on a journey with the books I have recommended.
This is a true story of a Russian spy that I found poetically sad yet uplifting.
This is a tale with no happy ending. And yet, ex-KGB naval intelligence officer Sergei leaves behind a compelling legacy of strength and bravery. His fight to ‘do the right thing’ and leave behind a regime that would eventually kill him is very real.
This is a plunge into a world of spies, murder, mistrust, and suffering. It filled me with awe and sadness, and it is not one I will forget easily.
**SILVER / 2ND PLACE WINNER - 2019 FEATHERED QUILL BOOK AWARDS**
He was a Soviet defector – She worked for the U.S. Federal Government. “Do we really know what we are getting ourselves into…” Sergei Kourdakov jumped from a Russian trawler in 1971 and barely survived the treacherous swim to the rocky shores of Queen Charlotte Islands, Canada. The handsome, twenty-year-old ex-KGB naval intelligence officer had defected—leaving behind a horrific life he could no longer face.
K. Kidd’s search for independence and a career with the Federal Government led her on a journey that far surpassed any expectations. A year…
I have worked in the mental health profession for over forty years. Currently, I serve as Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London, and as Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London, as well as Honorary Director of Research at the Freud Museum London. I also hold posts as Chair of the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council and as Honorary Fellow of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, and I have authored eighteen books and have served as series editor for some eighty-five further titles.
Back in the 1970s, a noted American psychologist, Dr. Sam Janus, whom I had the privilege of meeting at a conference, produced an unusually brave book about the private sexual lives of politicians based upon extensive interviews with sex workers in Washington, D.C., written in collaboration with the experienced psychiatrist Dr. Barbara Bess and the journalist Carol Saltus.
At one level, the private lives of political leaders should remain completely private, but at another level, it might be worth knowing that some of the people who damage the country through poor decision-making also have a long-standing history of damaging their own bodies by paying to be tortured by those women, known back then as “call girls.” I greatly admire this book, as it has provided me with tremendous understanding of the ways in which the private sexual tendencies of many human beings, especially those who endeavour to govern nations, will…
I’ve loved mystery novels since picking up my older sister’s Agatha Christie collection as a pre-teen. Over the years I’ve come to love novels with badass women detectives, especially when the world-building pulls you into a place and time that is almost an additional character, where you can feel the weather, smell the buildings, and taste the fear. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to add a social justice angle. Having read so many, I finally decided to write my own mystery set in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights where I grew up, not anywhere near the Hollywood version.
Better than any travel book, I’d recommend a Cara Black novel before going to Paris. I love her focus on a single district, or Arrondissement, in each of her Aimée Leduc detective novels. I especially like how she brings to life the history of each neighborhood. This is the first of the 20-book series and my favorite neighborhood in Paris. Aimée navigates politics and historic atrocities to solve the killing of an elderly Jewish woman, all the while trying to stay alive herself. You can almost smell the freshly baked baguettes.
In the Jewish quarter of Paris an old nightmare is reborn.
Aimee Leduc, a half-American, half-French investigator in Paris, is approached by a rabbi to decipher a fifty-year-old encrypted photograph and deliver it to an old woman in the Marais, the old Jewish quarter of the city.
When she does so, she finds a corpse on whose forehead a swastika has been carved. With the help of her partner Rene, a dwarf with extraordinary computer skills, she sets out to solve this horrible crime and finds herself caught up in a dangerous game with links to both modern politics and…
My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Set in Paris in the 1920s, this mystery has everything I want in an escapist read: a suave detective, his sharpshooting, bad-ass girlfriend, a twisty, unpredictable plot, and fabulous, quirky characters.
Many are based on icons of the era: Josephine Baker, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and all the usual Midnight in Paris celebrities. I first read this in my teens, and I still reread it for the madcap humor and view of Paris in the 1920s written by someone who was there.
"It has the delicious irresponsibility of a Wodehouse plot. . . . It's one of the funniest books we've read in a long time. It contains a great deal of shrewd satire."—The New York Times Multimillionaire and philanthropist Hugo Weiss is known in every capital of the Western world as a munificent patron of the arts. When Weiss suddenly vanishes while on a visit to Paris, his disappearance sets the stage for this uncommonly witty and urbane mystery. Homer Evans, an intrepid American detective, turns his keen intellect and remarkable intuition toward solving the puzzle of the financier's disappearance. Assisted…
Since I was a girl, I’ve had an enduring sense that women must work harder, be cleverer, think more creatively than men, both at work and sometimes at home. So I love a woman who stands up for herself, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. At one time, when the series Spooks was popular on TV, I wanted to be Ros, the operator who, when a dodgy guy followed her, hid around a corner. She flattened him with some nifty moves, stole his car keys and said: “Never follow me again.” Brilliant! I hope you enjoy all the feisty females on my book list.
The protagonist of this beautifully written, heart-rending book is the wonderfully-named Tequila Leila, a sex worker from Istanbul who, as the book begins, is dying in a rubbish bin on the outskirts of the city.
As her brain begins to shut down, Leila goes back in time to trace her story, while her friends, who she remembers in those ‘in-between’ moments between life and death, desperately look for her.
Leila, for me, is ebullient, larger than life, and intensely lovable. Despite being brutalised and living much of her life in danger, her humanity shines through. Leila has heart and soul and her friends, a strange group of ‘undesirables,’ adore her. A life-affirming read.
'Expect vibrant, vivid and eye-opening descriptions of Middle Eastern life propelled by a tender storyline, all in Shafak's haunting, beautiful and considered prose' Vanity Fair
'Incredibly sensuous and poetic and evocative' Pandora Sykes
'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore...'
For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and…
We know that there are markets for “illegal” goods and services, but how do these illegal markets operate? It’s not about who is participating in the market, but about how markets for things that are illegal function. How do you start your illegal business? How do you attract customers? How do you establish a reputation? All of these things are questions that attracted me to the study of male sex work. It is an occupation is thousands of participants. I was excited about the way that male sex work is illegal but also in plain view on the internet.
This is the book that revolutionized the way social scientists think about sex work.
We know that sex work is gendered (more women work as sex workers than men) and at the same time women have made significant gains in the formal labor market. This book sought to answer the question of why sex work continued to be so prominent even though “outside options” were growing for women.
Sex work integrated itself into the industrial system. Modern sex work has adapted to changing business practices and technology. Why? Because there is still a strong demand for the provision of intimate services and human sexual connection.
Despite increased economic opportunities for women, sexual commerce has not only thrived in the Western world, it has diversified along technological, spatial, and social lines. For example, contemporary sex workers often meet their clinets through the Internet, offering new kinds of encounters that are a far cry from the quick and impersonal contacts that we normally associate with prostitution. For "Temporarily Yours", sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein walked the streets and went behind closed doors, interviewing sex workers, their clients, and the government officials who regulate the business. Along the way, she discovered a significant transformation that is occurring in the urban…
All of my novels explore, in some way, how the characters are affected by trauma or loss, and how they respond to these difficulties over time. This comes partly from my impatience with the notion of “closure” and with the idea that we can ever truly find it after a traumatic event or a significant loss. I’m drawn to fiction and nonfiction that doesn’t shy away from the messiness of finding a way to live with these difficulties, or trying to. In addition to writing fiction, I’ve spent nearly ten years recommending novels and story collections through my Small Press Picks website.
In every story in this heart-rending collection, the protagonists—all of them Indigenous people—are dealing with some of the most challenging circumstances that can be imagined: the tragic deaths of loved ones, the trials of trying to rebuild one’s life post-incarceration, and the fallout from substance abuse, to name just some of the difficulties the stories address. At the same time, most of the protagonists exhibit some form of resilience in response to these challenges, and I was deeply moved by the variety of this resilience, by the characters’ determination, and by Johnston’s insights into their experiences. I also love the ways in which the stories are connected by place: All of them unfold in Oklahoma, and Johnston brings their settings to life.
In this collection of short stories that focuses on the modern-day experiences of Indigenous people living in Oklahoma, Johnston documents the quiet sorrow of everyday life as her characters traverse the normalized, heartbreaking rites of passage such as burying your grandfather, mother, or husband, becoming a sex worker, or reconnecting with your family after prison; the effects are subtle, yet loud, and always enduring. Whether Johnston's characters are coming of age and/or grappling with complex family dynamics, Johnston delivers the economy of loss and resilience that marks this post-colonial collection with biting, captivating prose that demands to be read from…
