71 books like Outfox

I loved the Dexter television series. I was delighted when I found the author’s books. I devoured the series. And when I finished the last one, I just wanted to start over again. I love anything that has police procedures or FBI, etc. With Dexter working with the Miami police department as a blood spatter expert, there was no way I wouldn’t like it, either on television or book series. I never knew what Dexter was going to do next. 

He is charming and likable. If I’d met him face to face, I would never think he was a serial killer. He did have rules, though; he only picked bad people who slipped through the fingers of the judicial system. I highly recommend this book.

I read this book as a contest judge. I’d never heard of the author before. Little did I know that I’d fall in love with Morgan and Lance. Hooked from the first book. Morgan is caught between a rock and a hard place. Tessa, who couldn’t be more ‘girl next door’–also Morgan’s kids’ babysitter–was murdered. Her neighbor needs Morgan to defend her son, who is accused of the murder. Morgan has known him for years and is determined to prove his innocence.  

Morgan asks her friend Lance, an ex-cop turned private investigator, to help solve the murder. I loved how they formed a relationship that developed with each new book of the series. I love series, especially when I love the author. I highly recommend this book. 

Stanalei Fletcher has a way of making damaged characters likeable and having the reader applaud as they grow. I love reading her books. This is the first of a series, and believe me, I was hooked after I finished it. Caitlin has been trying to forget Mac for two years. Now, they find themselves following a lead on a plot to steal deadly pathogens from a nearby biolab. 

I loved the dangerous situations they ran into and how they worked together to escape a raging fire in time to stop the terrorists. This is one of my go-to authors because of the security aspect. Northstar Security agents work independently, hired by the private sector, to recover stolen items, technology, or kidnappings. I highly recommend it!

David Baldacci kept me turning pages. I needed to discover what happened to Web London’s FBI Hostage Rescue Team. His job was to make sure they all came out alive. How was he the only one left? It’s something he needs to find out. It was a race against time to clear his name. All the clues lead him back to the alley where it all happened. He realizes when he gets there he is about to meet the assassin who caused the death of his team. 

I love anything with police procedures, especially the good cop being wrongly accused. It doesn’t hurt that I love to read any of David Baldacci's books. This is a book I would recommend to anyone who loves edge of your seat thrillers. 

Can I make this list and not include a golden-age detective story set in a country house at Christmas? This one has all the ingredients required for an afternoon by the fire, looking out at the wintry weather—a locked room, an appealing detective, and a cast of people compelled, rather unwisely, to spend Christmas in each other’s company. "If you ask me, there very likely wouldn’t have been a murder at all if it hadn’t been for him getting ideas about peace and goodwill, and assembling all these highly uncongenial people under the same roof at the same time.” 

I like the historical setting of Gentil’s books (mainly 1930s Australia, although her characters venture overseas in a couple of the books) and the original newspaper clippings that introduce the chapters, which give you a glimpse of current affairs that form the backdrop to the story. Personally, I also enjoy the fact that her protagonist is an artist, albeit one with a wealthy family behind him. There’s danger, disapproving family, Blackshirts, unrequited love, and above all, staunch friendships; Rowland and his mates are people you wish you could hang out with. Give the Devil His Due is the seventh book in the Rowland Sinclair series.  

I find the Georgian era fascinating (kinda shows, right?) particularly in the years immediately after Waterloo.

Gardner (a pseudonym for prolific author Jennifer Ashley) presents us with a sleuth who is a former officer recently returned from the war. He’s limping in body and spirit, and the puzzles he solves take us from the slums and alleys to high society, and a lot of interesting places in between.

Lacey is grouchy, astute, sweet, and tenacious, I doubt I will ever tire of reading of his exploits. (And if he’s your jam too, you will doubtless enjoy Gardner’s Gladiator Mysteries, and her Belowstairs Mysteries.) 

I think Jane Prescot is the perfect sleuth for this story of old money versus new money in 1910 New York City. She is a ladies’ maid to the new money Benchley daughters and she’s determined to keep them out of trouble. Her task becomes more difficult when Charlotte Benchley’s brand new fiancée is murdered. 

Jane is uniquely positioned to move through the city streets as well as into the homes of the upper crust. She’s smart, resourceful, and tenacious, but it’s her loyalty to her not-so-nice employers that had me rooting for her to uncover the killer. It definitely gave me Upstairs, Downstairs as well as Downton Abby vibes.

I love the pierced, tattooed punk/goth antiheroine Lisabeth Salander in this book. She is a survivor of abuse and takes pleasure in exposing abusers. I love Lisabeth because she is COOL and autistic–demonstrating that it is very possible to be both. She is a genius computer hacker with a photographic memory who lives to get vengeance on the bad guys.

Author Steig Larsson said he created a character ‘who was what Pippi Longstocking would have been like as an adult.’ As Pippi (the super-strong girl with a monkey who lived alone with a trunk of money) was my heroine as a child, no wonder I loved this heroine. 

There are many ways to approach history. Donna Lucey brilliantly chose to usher readers into the world of the Gilded Age via the captivating canvases of that era’s most sought-after portraitist, John Singer Sargent. There are always more stories lurking behind Sargent’s luxurious depictions of his subjects, and Lucey gets beneath the paint and the posing to give us her own picture of four very real women whose lives are far more nuanced than any portrait sitting can convey.