10 books like The Ax

This is a bit of a cheat too, because it’s not about us exploring space, it’s about creatures from space coming to Earth – in the classic tale of a Martian invasion.

Wells writes beautifully – and the book isn’t too long – but it’s maybe a bit much for readers of my book right now. I include it because I hope they’ll read it when they’re older. It had a big impact on me as a 10-year-old because the Martians land – and start their campaign of conquest and destruction – in the little corner of Surrey, England, where I grew up.

Writing at the height of empire, Wells was, in part, inviting us Brits to imagine what it would be like if, for once, a technologically superior power invaded us.

“The man with ten minutes to live was laughing.” Thus begins one of the greatest war novels by one of the greatest living writers of espionage thrillers. 

Frederick Forsyth’s epic story of the Persian Gulf War mingles fact with fiction, and never lets up its humming current of suspense. Incidentally, that laughing man was Gerald Vincent Bull, a real historical figure who invented a super-gun for Saddam Hussein. Not exactly the safest line of work. 

His assassination triggered a Rube Goldberg series of events that only Forsyth would have the… well… foresight to use as the first sentence in this violent, epochal tale. 

"The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted." 

It’s more than a creepy opening sentence; it’s a mission statement from the Master of the Macabre, the Poet of the Paranormal, the Chaucer of Chills. It encapsulates what Stephen King does so well – a plucky little girl gets lost in the woods, a shadowy presence stalking her, and something dark, magical, and miraculous emerging from the girl’s soul. 

This short novel is so riveting, you will finish it in one sitting.

Stephen Hunter’s crime fiction masterpiece, Dirty White Boys, begins with a sentence lovingly detailing the villain’s genitals. 

I assure you this opening is in no way gratuitous or prurient; it signals that we’re in for a wild ride, informing us that only “…three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye….” 

Pye is one of the great literary villains of all time – racist, crude, violent, and cruel… and smart as a whip. And the tone here is pitch-dark hillbilly noir. If you’re brave enough to read this book it will live in your imagination for the rest of your life. 

Hammett is the great-grandaddy of hard-boiled crime fiction and I devoured The Maltese Falcon when I was still a middle schooler.

Only as a published author myself did I discover The Glass Key, this strange, complex thriller in which private perversity mirrors political corruption in an unnamed American city a brief train ride away from New York.

Ned Beaumont, a gambler and fixer, winds his way through a labyrinth of mixed motives, class conflicts, double crosses, and ambiguous bromance. Hammett's tight storytelling and lean, mean prose were a great inspiration for my book.

Only when I arrived in Paris did I discover the works of this major African American writer.

Back then, Himes—still under-recognized in the USA—was a long-time household name in France. Himes not only brought the American crime novel to the Black part of town, he did it with a satiric bite that is his distinguishing feature.

The Black police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are at the center of the nine novels in Himes's Harlem Cycle, an epic achievement in crime fiction.

Himes's Harlem is a violent phantasmagoria where Digger and Ed—in order to protect the poor, ordinary working folk of the community—are forced to be the baddest of the bad.

Cotton Comes to Harlem is my favorite work in the collection. Published in 1965, it skewers both Black militants and white racists with wicked glee.

It opens with the most brilliant disclaimer I've ever seen: "Warning. This is a novel. Everything is true and everything is false."

Dominique Manotti is a grande dame of French crime fiction, and a friend and mentor to me. Lorraine Connection is widely considered her masterpiece.

It's a sweeping 21st-century epic that starts in what might be considered a French rust belt town, in the region called Lorraine, where the old steel and iron works have been bought by the Korean firm Daewoo and transformed into a cathode-ray factory.

An industrial accident is the triggering event in this novel that explores the murderous effects of the globalized economy on a universe of characters from different classes, ethnicities, and nationalities. Virtuoso writing.

This witty and suspenseful tour-de-force is set in a Paris most tourists never see: the Nineteenth Arrondissement, a sprawling, multicultural district where working-class grit coexists uneasily with encroaching gentrification.

The author, who doubles as a well-known documentary filmmaker, is also a friend of mine from the French noir world.

Arab Jazz, first published in 2012, sardonically explores the religious fanaticism of Jews, Muslims and evangelical Christians while weaving a thrilling intrigue that earned it France's top prize for crime fiction.

I like a good satire and I love Ian McEwan. Set in academia, Professor Beard, with his Nobel prize in physics clutched to his chest, is offended by the idea that art might be as good a tool for curing a sick planet as his analytical facts. For all his scientific knowledge, he fails to understand that art has power. His younger colleague tries his best, explaining how images created by art bypass the modern cerebral cortex and go straight to our ancient limbic brain which controls memory and emotion, the part of the brain where we process value judgments, judgments that exert a strong influence on our behavior. This book makes the case for climate change as an important subject in literature, art, and music, because we need to touch hearts before we can create change. And it’s pretty funny on top of it.

In a similar vein to the previous book, this novel focuses on a man whose life is spiralling out of control. His professional life begins to crumble, he nearly gets run over by a car and his two teenage children get themselves into angst-causing strife. What I love the most about this book is that it’s narrated in the second person by the main character Michael who’s essentially having a mid-life crisis breakdown. This can be hard to pull off, but it works here as it’s like Michael’s providing commentary on himself and his life as if observing someone else. It makes for some hilarious writing, despite the serious theme. The author shows that sometimes to really appreciate the highs of life, you need to hit rock bottom first.