100 books like The Dead Don't Boogie

This book, by Louise Welsh, has an air of darkness and gloom that permeates the whole book from the very first page–something I find hugely compelling.

Although set in modern-day Glasgow, this story could be a gothic horror from the nineteenth century. Rilke, a thin, dark figure whose work as an auctioneer tasked with clearing the contents of the house of someone who has recently died, leads him to the discovery of a set of sadomasochistic torture photographs of a young woman that might, in fact, be actual snuff photos. His determination to discover what happened to the woman leads him into the city's dark, seedy underbelly that few of its inhabitants would be aware of.

I found this book to be incredibly unsettling, though the writing is beautifully constructed in a lyrical literary style, which drew me deeper and deeper into a world I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted… show more.

I love seeing rich, powerful, and corrupt figures get their just desserts, and this book delivers this in spades–very inventive spades.

Here, a gonzo journalist finds that important people he has been writing about are turning up dead, murdered in fascinatingly brutal and clever ways. Murders that make us, the readers, just as complicit as the perpetrator since, while we may want to look away, the vicarious satisfaction we get from them surely condemns us as much as the killer.

I’m using the word ‘we’ here, but maybe I just mean myself–I doubt it! This makes this book sound like a grim read, but it isn’t–Banks was a superb, funny, socially aware writer who could deliver memorable, entertaining characters, some of whom you’d like to hang out with, others not so much…

I’m not usually a fan of the police procedural type of crime novel, but I would always make an exception for this book. Arguably the book that kick-started the ‘Tartan Noir’ genre of modern Scottish crime fiction, this story follows the gritty, witty Chandler-esque detective, Laidlaw, as he tries to track down the murderer of a Glasgow teenager.

This sounds like the plot of so many crime novels, but what elevates this book for me is the wonderful prose that surrounds the hard Glasgow setting, along with Laidlaw’s sense of social injustice and inequality and his empathy with those very inhabitants of the criminal underworld he is forced to navigate.

I love books with unusual structures, and this one certainly fits the bill. The story concerns the violent murder of three crofters (farmers) in a remote Scottish Highland community in 1869.

When reading the book and the way it is presented, you are never sure if you are reading true witness testimonies, contemporaneous court reports and medical statements, or the confession of the actual murderer himself. Unreliable narrators can sometimes be frustrating, but in this case, how sure are we that any of what we are reading is actually true?

The book delivers a sort of courtroom drama in which the reader is left to piece together to draw their own conclusion.

The English Wife had me racing to unravel the secrets at the heart of Annabelle and Bay's marriage. And at the same time I was savoring the fascinating characters and brilliant writing.

The twists and turns of the plot had me gasping, but the biggest mystery was understanding the central characters and their relationship.

A writer is working on a true crime book when she goes out into a snowstorm and discovers a child. Many years earlier, two young girls ventured out into the night. One returned to discover her parents have been murdered and her brother is a suspect. The other girl never returns. Who is this child and how did he get there? Going from the current mystery to the cold case years earlier, the solutions to both are resolved with a truly surprising punch.

In Book 11, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis, fresh from Athens to the picturesque Greek island, must find the perpetrators of a gruesome murder of a young woman found dead in a rural church. Siger, via his blunt investigator Kaldis, is an expert in sprinkling the beautiful Greek landscape with notes of suspense and mystery, and, like the earlier entries in this attractive series, Murder in Mykonos does not disappoint.

It’s the hot, hazy summer of 1862 and painter Edward Radcliffe has arranged a creative retreat for his friends at Birchwood Manor, on a bend of the river Thames. Things go terribly wrong and there's a death. A hundred and fifty years later in London, archivist Elodie Winslow stumbles across a leather satchel; what’s inside—a photograph and sketchbook—sends Elodie on an investigative journey. While Elodie can come and go as she pleases to Birchwood Manor, someone else can’t—the ghost that’s inhabited the house ever since that fateful summer. An atmospheric mystery, one to be savored on a winter’s evening with your feet up in front of a fireplace and a cup of tea by your side.

I loved British forensic archeologist and single mom Ruth Galloway. She’s plump, “moon-faced,” and middle-aged.

In the line of duty, Ruth is doing a TV bit and worries that her stomach sticks out. I can relate. As she frantically searches for a kidnapped child, two dashing men vie for her affection–this gave me hope. And I loved the complex crew of characters, the twisty plot, ancient castles and towers, and the rather exceptional number of extramarital affairs.

I found this book to be a fine and fast-paced read, and Ruth Galloway is a unique and humble heroine. Happy to say there are 15 books in the series.

This compulsively readable novel by Cape Cod native and television writer Kepnes (7th Heaven, The Secret Life of the American Teenager) begins in a New Hampshire middle school where nerdy Jon and sweet Chloe are best friends united against the provincial attitudes of their small town. Everyone is shocked when John is kidnapped and given up for dead. Years later he turns up in Providence, where he has been kept in a coma by a rogue neuroscience professor who wants to transform him into the monster of The Dunwich Horror by Providence’s own, ambivalently celebrated H.P. Lovecraft. When John learns that he now has terrifying powers that put him at odds with everyone he loves, he sets out to find the professor whose recklessness got him into this mess—and maybe saved his life.