37 books like The Con Man's Daughter

You are stronger than you think you are. Your primary limitations are not physical; they are in between your ears. In this novel, the inflection point the protagonist faces is not due to past mistakes or poor choices; it’s just life. It happens to all of us. In this novel, the protagonist finds his limits, and then he transcends them. The movie was pretty good, but the book is on another level. 

I reread this book every once in a while, and I feel like I learn something new from it every time. The plot is very simple, but what I love the most about the novel is Dickey’s portrait of his characters and the incredible, but very human, pressure he puts them under. 

I love Lawrence Block’s work. In this book, he transcends genre and defies categorization. He paints a compelling portrait of an ex-NYC cop who is living in an SRO hotel and committing slow-motion suicide, but then he hits one of those bumps in the road—an inflection point. Block shows you a side of NYC that’s as real as it gets.

I left home at 18 with no plan or clue, and I ended up living in NYC in the early ‘70s. I made a lot of mistakes. I mean, a lot. I got away with some of them, or so I thought, and some had long-term consequences. Eventually I reached a fork in the road very similar to the one Block uses in his novel, where you look in the mirror and don’t like that guy very much.

Matthew Scudder, Block’s protagonist, decides to do something with and about himself.… show more.

Redemption is not just about stopping this or quitting that. Whether your problems are chemical or behavioral, those simple changes are a necessary beginning, but they are rarely enough to get the monkey’s teeth out of your neck.

In this novel, Block’s protagonist from 8 Million Ways to Die wrestles with the post-addiction problem of who you are, really, after that thing that has been propping you up is taken away. Redemption isn’t about what happens when you stop digging the hole. It’s about what happens when you climb out of the hole and start becoming.

This is how good Mosley is: I couldn’t escape the feeling that I knew his protagonist the whole time I was reading this. I swear I had met the guy somewhere. I walked those same Brooklyn streets, and Mosley’s portrait of them was strong enough and real enough to make me miss the place, even though Brooklyn is overrun with lawyers and stock brokers these days.

And Mosley’s secondary characters are just as real, and if you screw up, you just might meet some of them. One last thing: when Mosley writes about race, he does it in lowercase. That way, the story sneaks under your defenses and hits you much harder than if it was all in caps. Walter Mosley is not just a writer; he’s an artist.

This was the first Martina Cole novel I read, and it literally changed my life. Not only does it allow you to get inside the sick and twisted head of a serial killer, but you also get a real insight into the dark and murky criminal underworld. It’s a brutal, violent story, but it really reflects that world. 

The fact that a woman wrote it really did profoundly change something in (young, naive, 15-year-old) me. It opened my eyes to a completely new spin on the crime thriller genre for me, not only for reading but also for when I first began my career as an author. 

I adore the character of Sam Holland. She is a badass cop, not willing to take crap from anyone, even her fellow officers, with a smart mouth that gets her into as much trouble as it gets her out of. Her character is written with such nuance and honesty that she’s someone I’ve willingly followed through 22 books (and counting).

Sam works twice as hard to make sure she’s living up to her own expectations as much as anyone else’s, always afraid of falling short, something I think we all tend to be too hard on ourselves about at times. The love interest throughout the series sometimes struggles with her strong personality, even as he admires her for it, which I think lends a depth of realism to their relationship as it grows and sometimes flounders.

Ms. Murphy takes her time with the world building, in a universe where the supernatural is not known but discovered, and it is a treat to discover this world through the eyes of the protagonist. It’s also a switch that in this story at least, there is not a romance element. I also appreciate that Native American culture and folklore were not exploited in order to make a better story. I enjoyed this was not your typical werewolf, vampire, witch read and brought in something new, or at least something not often written about.

This book appealed to me on several different levels. First, I’m a sucker for a deep dark secret and the story begins with the indication that the character is hiding something huge. Secondly, it is a steamy romance with love scenes so hot the pages sizzle. Thirdly, the plot is so intricately woven that I couldn’t stop reading. The story takes the reader inside a religious cult and exposes practices that are shocking and frightening. I learned what makes people fall for the artful deception of the leader, and the dangers of escaping. I rooted for the characters all through the book, although at times, I wanted to shake both of them and get them to be honest with each other. If you love a sizzling romance with tons of suspenseful action, you’ll devour this well-written story! 

Yeah, I know, naming Jack Reacher as one of the badasses of crime fiction is the equivalent of a six-inch putt. A gimme. Child has taken a totally implausible premise—a six-foot-five former Army MP wandering around the United States and finding trouble with nothing but an ATM card in his pocket—and created one of the best characters in suspense literature. When Reacher is on the hunt, the results are never in doubt, which is why we love him. He’s the fullback coming through the line, time and time again, and no one can stop him. One reviewer of Child’s books said that Reacher is never the underdog. That’s a perfect description.

Tony Hill is one of the finest literary characters in print. He is an emotionally troubled psychologist brought in by police to profile a serial killer who is using medieval torture methods to murder his victims. His skill is to understand why the killer is killing, and to empathize with him. This book spawned the British TV series The Wire in the Blood, book 2 in the series.