72 books like The Anderson Tapes

The first Travis Magee novel hooked me. The image of a beach bum, living on a houseboat won in a poker game was enough. But when that bum transformed into a more modern version of Don Quixote all MacDonald had to do was to play me, gaff me, and pull me on board for the remainder of the series. Magee takes his retirement in chunks, righting wrongs and recovering that which was stolen. His life is full of brawling, babes, and bodies. All good stuff for the reader. 

The late, great Ed McBain inspired a whole generation of crime fiction authors (including me) and influenced television too. Hill Street Blues was based on his character-driven novels and changed cop shows forever.

Ten Plus One is just one of the many in the 87th Precinct series, and as close to the perfect crime fiction novel that a mere mortal can get.

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.

When my shoulder are in knots, I can get a massage, or I can reread Fletch.

If you know the book, that will seem weird. It’s not a pretty story and it’s got a pile of seventies misogyny and homophobia that definitely grates. This is not a comfort read. Except it is, for me, because I.M. Fletcher is an artist in the medium of trouble.

This is the story of Fletch’s impossible mountain of problems, personal and professional, and watching him work makes me feel like I’ve seen someone solve a Rubik’s cube underwater with their eyes closed. At the start, a mess. At the end, elegance. Everything is sorted and resolved, no matter how reprehensibly Fletch got it done. My neck tension releases. I can go to bed.

As chief of the Philadelphia Police Department, Timoney ended the notorious practice of “juking” crime statistics to soothe politicians. For example, if you want to lower the murder rate, just book the killers on “manslaughter! This book is by the third of brilliant cops who reformed the NYPD. Compare what they did in 1990 to the current misrule and chaos in the Big Apple and I can truly say to you, “Read it and weep!”

Being a New Yorker, I’m a sucker for any true New York books, and this one is as authentic as they come. I also really appreciated how believable Chiara Corelli is. She has all the right mix of ethical and tough, but she is also a fully realized person with both external and internal goals and needs. Really good police procedural with a healthy dose of humanity. 

This book is one of a series of Mathew Scudder stories by Block. I enjoy his books because his main character is as flawed as we are. Matt is a hard-drinking former cop who goes about helping friends out of their troubles. And his friends are in a lot of trouble. Action and close calls, as well as humor, abound in this well-crafted story.

This novel introduced Matthew Scudder, an ex-New York City cop turned unlicensed private investigator. In this case, a young woman has been brutally murdered and the police believe they have solved the crime. But the victim’s father hires Scudder to look deeper into the case which will produce more than its share of surprises. The beauty of this series, though, lies in the development of the Matthew Scudder character, who remains one of the most fascinating and compelling figures in all of crime fiction. The first chapter, which introduces Scudder, is one of the best opening chapters of any crime novel.

This is a modern mystery classic by a master of the plot twist. I’ve studied Rendell’s stories for years, to understand how she makes such extraordinary yet plausible leaps.

In this book the revelatory information is contained in the very first sentence. A woman has killed her employers, for a reason that is shocking in its randomness and absurdity. Rendell then backtracks to show us that the victims did nothing rotten enough to deserve their fate. There is no motive. Nothing is gained.

As the author states in that amazing first sentence, the killer is driven to extraordinary violence purely by the need to keep her illiteracy a secret. Stunning.

Reed Farrel Coleman, called “a hard-boiled poet,” and a “noir laureate” has written somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty crime novels, including a number of Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone novels. One of my favorites is Where it Hurts, which features divorced, retired cop Gus Murphy who’s picked up part-time work as a courtesy van driver for a run-down hotel. The only thing that interrupts his mindless routine comes when ex-con Tommy Delcamino asks Gus to investigate the mysterious death of his son. Coleman is particularly strong when it comes to character. This book especially resonates with me because of Coleman’s ability to dig deep inside his character’s psyche, not only examining how they tick but why they tick. His books, especially this one, are tightly plotted but for me the real attraction is his examination of personal, moral dilemmas. I’m especially attracted to and admiring of Coleman’s books,… show more.