100 books like The Hot Rock

Tolkin doesn’t hit you with belly laughs so much as tickle the upper corners of your mind with his knowing take on the mores and follies of the Hollywood of the late 1980s. (Of special interest to me, as that’s the moment I arrived there to begin my own TV and film career.) The trenchant satire is exemplified by the crime at its center: studio exec Griffin Mill, badgered by threats from some anonymous screenwriter he’s mistreated, focuses his attention on a different C-list scribe and winds up strangling him to death. Get it?  In a business full of writer-killing executives, Tolkin’s big-wig antihero literally kills a writer.

The first novel about legendary private eye Phillip Marlowe is also the first mystery novel that ever made me cry when I turned the last page.

Marlowe’s poetic narration and bruised outsider’s voice offer a cynical but also strangely hopeful perspective on both the shady underworld types and the corrupt high-society folk who fill the “mean streets” down which Marlowe must walk (in Chandler’s much-quoted phrase).

Why hopeful when death–the big sleep–awaits us all? Because a man of principles like Marlowe can still bring a measure of justice in this unjust world, sometimes just by bearing witness.

This is not a book about animals, but it is a great book in which animals play a critical role.

This is the seventh book in Hiassen’s Florida-based Skink series and possibly the best. One of the main characters, Angie Armstrong, is a wildlife wrangler with extraordinary skills which leads to hilarious consequences.

This book also manages intriguing social and political commentary including Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons’ efforts to support a fictional president whose behavior is similar and almost as wacky as our former leader who is apparently running again – I hope someone reads this book to him.

Again, it’s difficult to pick a favorite Vonnegut book. I think he may have influenced my writing more than any other author. More than Ian Fleming. More than Elmore Leonard or Raymond Chandler. Some might say he isn’t really a thriller writer. Some may classify him as a writer of sci-fi. And yeah, maybe. But he’s so much more than that. He’s a zany magician and mad scientist who can turn utter tragedy into very black comedy. Mother Night is about Nazis and spies and war crimes and white supremacists. All the elements of a thriller combined with Vonnegut’s patented absurdity. I find every one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books thrilling, thoughtful, and hilarious.  

As a woman who was raised to have a moral compass, I am outraged whenever someone in authority abuses their power and gets away with it.

While I don’t condone revenge, nonetheless, I have to admit I cheered when lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs finally gets his comeuppance and is judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death-by alligator, a unique means of execution, to say the least.

Ingenious, more than slightly off-kilter Elmore Leonard is the undisputed king of criminal mayhem. His wacky, raucous Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark humorous tale chocked full of zany characters; a group of magnificent miscreants Mr. Leonard created, knowing his readers would love to hate.

Before I became an author, I enjoyed a successful career as a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. So, naturally, I spent a tremendous amount of time in the swimwear Mecca of the USA…better known as Florida.

While in the Sunshine State, I encountered my fair share of zanies…better known as buyers; a cast of kooky characters who loved to add some spice to the human stew we all simmer in with some pretty hair-brained schemes. So, it’s only natural that no one tickles my funny bone more than Tim Dorsey’s protagonist, trivia buff and certifiably crazy as a loon Serge A. Storms and his drug-addled partner Coleman who loves cartoons.

In Florida Roadkill, Tim Dorsey’s debut novel of the series, the author introduces us to socially conscious, but misguided Serge who eliminates those he deems either jerks or pests of humankind. Serge’s zany brand of frontier justice is nothing short of… show more.

Like Dortmunder, Grimm is an idea man, and his idea for the perfect bank robbery is a doozy: he’ll dress as a clown, hold all the workers and customers in the vault, shoot out the video cameras, negotiate with the cops, take off the clown suit and makeup, “release” himself and his two accomplices as “hostages,” and waltz out of the bank and right past the entire NYPD. The only problem is, getting out of the city proves a lot harder than getting out of the bank. Cronley owes a lot to Westlake, but I picked Quick Change because he repays that debt and then some, with a smirking wit that lights up every page. 

Elmore Leonard was the first crime author I ever read, and his books are what got me hooked on the genre.

Like many of his characters, Jack Foley, despite being a criminal, in this case a bank robber, is just so much fun to spend time with and read about.

The book starts with Foley escaping from prison only to find himself bundled into the trunk of a car with a female US marshal. What follows is a cat-and-mouse, cops and robbers tale, as only Elmore Leonard could have written it.

Fabulous characters, amazing situations, and some of the coolest dialogue in all of fiction. The film was great, but the book is even better.

Read it and you’ll want to read everything else he ever wrote.

Westlake’s unlucky, sad-sack adventure hero John Dortmunder is the greatest conman character in crime fiction. Years ago, at a bookstore coffee shop, I perused some book reviews for what to read next. One reviewer recommended Westlake’s comic caper series. I walked to the mystery section, pulled out Don’t Ask, opened to a random page, read it, and laughed out loud. That was not just good luck: There’s a hilarious passage on nearly every page of the book. It’s about two fictitious nations fighting over a religious artifact, but that does not begin to sum up the zany genius of Westlake’s plot. Donald Westlake was a sort of imposter himself -- he wrote under more than a dozen pen names throughout a spectacular career that spanned half a century.

Maybe it’s because the protagonist and her group of amateur sleuths in my series manage to make every mistake imaginable before they finally succeed in bringing the real killer to justice, that I am tickled pink by Donald E. Westlake’s cast of over-the-top-miscreants.

Starring in Bank Shot, Westlake’s zany characters are more like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Gang leader John Dortmunder and the most inept group of criminals ever to stumble and bumble their way through an ill-fated caper are a rollicking treat that combines fast-moving suspense with laugh-out-loud wit as they attempt to steal a temporarily relocated bank that is inside a mobile home.

All Dortmunder has to do is get past seven security guards, put the bank-on-wheels in gear, and drive away. It’s a simple plan, until it all goes wrong…