Fans pick 86 books like Slocum 376

Much like Italian filmmakers managed to create the spaghetti western by riffing on the genre from an ocean away, English pulp writers created the Piccadilly Western: violent, cynical, sometimes even too edgy for its own good. The Adam Steele books often verge on tastelessness with their violence and insensitivity, but that’s relieved by a sort of dark humor—often groan-inducing. It can be a lot to take, but for those who prefer too much to too little… Adam Steele is definitely not too little. The first book has Civil War hero Steele going outlaw to avenge his murdered father, with his best friend as the lawman hot on his trail. 

Before settling into the chronicle of the title character, this first entry in the Undertaker series (from the author of the much longer-running Edge books as well) follows a circuitous course involving an unfaithful wife and a vengeful husband. I won’t spoil the surprises along the way, but the Undertaker himself pushes the Western antihero to its limit. He’s all but emotionless, very nearly a sociopath, but with a certain competence and honor that gives him an appeal. (Even though he’s further saddled by the lame catchphrase ‘Bye-bye.’) I actually find his semi-autistic callousness more bearable than Steele’s more willful nastiness, since it seems the Undertaker was simply born the way he is, rather than choosing it.

You’ll recognize certain plot points from these books remixed into my book, though I found the Undertaker’s continued lack of character development a bit grating from one book to the next. That’s the… show more.

You’re largely in the same boat with Longarm as you are with Slocum. The main differences is that Longarm’s name isn’t as good a euphemism (his name isn’t even really Longarm, it’s Custis Long) and that he’s a U.S. Marshall, not an outlaw like Slocum. Sort of like James Bond in the Wild West… wait, that’s James West of Wild Wild West… sort of like James West without the steampunk gadgets. Longarm goes from town to town, bringing bad men to justice and taking bad girls to bed. 

Although this series has the dubious distinction of provoking an “I can do better than that” reaction in me. In Longarm on the Border—installment 2, as there are actually two books by that title in this four-hundred-strong and only recently ended series—the main character finds himself in a threesome. Maybe it’s that these are the adult westerns not being published… show more.

To quote Wernher von Braun, “research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.” In that spirit, I should mention I wasn’t just riffing off yellowed old paperbacks, but doing research into the specific setting and time period of my own book. Although this is a case where the research didn’t necessarily find its way into the first book, but was something I earmarked for a future installment. Nonetheless, The Texas Indians is a good read, giving a comprehensive overview of the Indigenous history of the region and providing many avenues for further research as I write the next book in the series.

When I was 11 years old, there was a TV show called Northwest Passage, which was an eye-opener for me because it took place at a time when the American frontier was somewhere in New York State. At the end of each episode the image of a book appeared, and I pestered my parents to get me a copy. A few days before my birthday, I caught sight of the book in a bag on my dad’s dresser. I was thrilled. I loved the adventures of Rogers’ Rangers as they fought their way through an endless forest during the French and Indian War and searched for the fabled shortcut to the Orient. In school, my book report on Northwest Passage was so long and enthusiastic that the teacher called time on me.

A once-elegant Victorian mansion in London has been chopped up into individual “bed-sit” apartments occupied by a quirky assortment of tenants, each with his or her own secrets. The enjoyment of this book lies in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house and the unbearable tension of wondering how each tenant will escape the killer in their midst.  

This novel perfectly captures the frenetic pleasure-seeking ethos of the youth of the English upper classes after the horrors of WW1- unsurpsingly, as it is written by one of them.

Evelyn Waugh was one of the Bright Young People, as they became known, who tore round London in sports cars, snatching at policemen’s helmets for the treasure hunts they loved.

This one’s a story of obsessive love, with a heroine who is undoubtedly flawed, but who you can’t help cheering on, even when she’s doing very bad things.

You wouldn’t want her to be your brother’s girlfriend, but she’d be hilarious company on a night out. The story is darkly funny, but ultimately uplifting, which I think is a great combination in a book.

This one had me on the edge of my seat. More telling for me to be thrown back in time to the 1960s. I didn’t live this life, but the background was familiar. I remember the Kray brothers and I did once briefly have a job in the sleazy sort of club where the boss had his goons hold a guy so he could punch him in the gut. Scary. Simon Michael’s story is all too believable and it is a testament to his ability to pull me into that world that it threw up long-gone memories. The story is told in first person which works to keep you guessing along with the protagonist barrister sleuth. For me it was a thrill ride into the past.

Dominic wrote two very good crime books in a short series before publishing Vine Street.

I am including Vine Street on my list because, although it’s set in London and is therefore not ‘regional’, it was one of the great crime novels of 2021-22 and deserves to become a classic. I read this book before it was published, and I knew, like everyone else, that it was something special.

The story spans almost a century, from the seedy streets of London’s Soho in the 1930s, until the present day. There are some really well-researched and vividly depicted descriptions of police investigations in the 30s, and just for that it’s worth a read. But there’s also a twisting, mesmerizing plot that takes us all the way to the present.

What really distinguishes Vine Street, though, is the writing itself, which seems to echo the rhythms of the 1930s jazz clubs, and… show more.