75 books like Small Vices

In Mosely’s first Easy Rawlins novel, Easy is in the thick of it. He’s a war-scarred veteran living in 40s Los Angeles who has to contend with brutal racist cops and white men who wish to harm him for the sole offense of talking to a white woman. He lost his factory job, his mortgage is due, and he finds himself on shifting terrain where it’s nearly impossible to tell allies from enemies.

When the phone rings, it’s never good news. So Easy has to play it smart. Bide his time. Enlist help from his memorably violent associate, Mouse. His foes have more power, more money, and more guns and like to remind him that they’re no one to be trifled with. But then again, neither is Easy.

Child’s Jack Reacher is a classic knight errant, strong, resourceful, and courageous who has headlined dozens of books. But this book stands out because, in the finale, he squares off with a formidable opponent with a hook for a hand.

Reacher struggles to stay conscious during this standoff because he has a woodworking nail stuck in his head, shrapnel from a shotgun blast, that is inexorably shutting down his brain and body. I will remember that passage for quite some time.  

This book takes place in Boston during the broiling hot summer of ‘74. The protagonist of Lehane’s sublime novel is Mary Pat Fennessy, a hard-bitten mother from the Southie projects who took a look at this list of tough guys, chuckled, punched the #5 guy in the throat, and took over his spot.

Mary Pat’s teen daughter is missing, the Irish mob may know more about it than they’re letting on, and all the while, the desegregation of the public schools has turned the city into a violent racial hotbox. In Small Mercies, Mary Pat navigates searing issues of loyalty and justice. Race and grief, and as intense pressures converge on both her and the city, she responds the only way she knows how—by coming out swinging. 

Simmons’ battered PI, Joe Kurtz, is released from a ten-year stint in Attica and storms through this novel to borrow a line from the late, great Roger Ebert, “like a violent unmade bed.”

Hardcase is uncompromising, terse, drenched in noir, and not for the squeamish. Kurtz is matched up against several worthy foes, including a couple of the most memorable heavies I’ve ever read about. And the ending, well, it more than justifies the title.

Like Paretsky’s V. I. and Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, six-foot, former police officer and intrepid Boston P.I. Carlotta Carlyle is dogged, street smart, and tough while navigating the vagaries of big city corruption and big money influence.

She is bored by her desk job undercover assignment investigating fraud in Boston’s Big Dig construction project. She craves the action that I, as a reader, want to see her undertake. I hope this is also the type of character I have created in my book.

This is another author I read religiously, and the connection between Spenser and Hawk is one of the primary reasons why. But this book has stayed with me in a way the others haven’t because of the dramatic way Parker clarified the difference between these two characters in one of the most impactful closing scenes in the entire series.

Street names, the Charles River, bridges, the Back Bay, the Public Gardens, actual hotels and restaurants—Robert B. Parker’s forty Spenser novels make Boston so much a character that Parker wrote Spenser’s Boston. The sixth novel in the series, published in 1980, has Spenser searching for a missing lesbian activist who’s been kidnapped by an anti-gay group. Like Buffalo, Boston sometimes gets a lot of snow. Unlike Buffalo, which is not the snowiest city in New York but is depicted as such, Boston is not known as a snow capital. That Spenser must search during a blizzard is a welcome dose of realism.

Spenser is a hard-nosed private detective living and working in Boston. When his girlfriend Susan runs off to California with another man, Spenser feels betrayed but understands. She has her freedom. Then his best friend, Hawk, is falsely arrested and jailed in the new man’s town. This sets off a firestorm of murder and violence as Spenser first frees Hawk and then they both attempt to free Susan from an abusive, if consensual, relationship. And then the CIA gets involved. A Catskill Eagle is the twelfth of forty Spenser novels written by Parker.

Robert B. Parker’s Cold Service is one of my favorite Spenser novels because it provides more insight into the character Hawk. Hawk is in the hospital, three bullets in his back from trying to protect a bookie from the Ukrainian mob. The Ukrainians are spreading their turf from NYC to the Boston area (a town called Marshport). Spenser comes to the rescue, and the two men take on the impossible task of defeating the Ukrainian mob and their Afghani heroine-dealing overlords while avenging Hawks shooting. Alone, Hawk can’t deal with the thought of showing weakness and Spencer ponders his mortality. Together Spenser and Hawk appear to be invincible. Their code allows them to engage in brutality and come out as likable characters. The way in which Parker spins a tale using simple dialogue is ingenious. His main characters Spenser, Hawk, and Susan Silverman are a joy to get to know… show more.

Early Autumn made me cry from two directions. As a tween, reading about Spenser’s rescue of Paul, a shut-down, emotionally neglected boy that Spenser first assesses as “an unlovely little bastard”, I cried in sympathy and relief for Paul.

Over a summer, Spenser taught him skills, built up his strength and gave him the confidence to find his own dreams, before leaving him at the doorway to the life he now knew he wanted. As an adult, I cried with joy for Spenser, who connected with a stranger, taught what he had to teach, and changed a life.

Really helping someone in a lasting way is rarely so easy as it was in this book, but it’s a worthwhile dream and this Cinderella story gets me every time.