100 books like The Instant Enemy

This is the best courtroom murder/whodunnit ever!

It is so educative about the players in a criminal trial and what makes them tick: from the defendant to the prosecutor, to the defense lawyer, and the judge. It’s got sex, drama, and jealousy and keeps you on your toes until the completely unexpected twist at the very end.

I love this book even more, knowing that Scott Turow, a Chicago attorney like me, wrote it on his way to and from work at his law office! And he endorsed my new book!

There are certainly many different types of lists on which this book belongs. I always tell people Ghost Story is the scariest thing I’ve ever read. I was fortunate enough to relay that to the late great Peter Straub at a horror writers’ conference many years ago. Though I’m sure he would have liked praise for a more contemporary work, there’s a timelessness in the terror he evokes in this book. But that’s not the reason I include it here. It’s because I think ghosts are a form of Fate. Violence, injustice, visceral reactions—these are the things we associate with ghosts, and these are the elements that are central to the story of the punishing hand of Fate in this novel. 

This is an unsettling, deeply disturbing book. I put it on my list because I worked with Bob Lifton (Robert Jay Lifton) in a tutorial for 2 years at Yale. He was a student of unthinkable disasters, atrocities (Hiroshima, Thought Reform and the psychology of Totalism, Nazi Doctors to name a few). For over two years, we met together regularly to discuss and try to understand what was happening in contemporary American culture, and how it was changing during the late 1960s, particularly among young people. We talked about political unrest, the Vietnam war and the Bobby Seale Black Panther trial in New Haven, the student strike and the May Day, 1970 rally, including memorable appearances by the Chicago Seven, thousands of Panther supporters, and observed by the 82nd Airborne Division. He, and his book, helped me sort out how unthinkable things could happen, and he helped me come… show more.

When I was thinking about the second book I wrote in my trilogy, I knew I had to learn about violence, particularly violence in prison. What causes it, its impact, and why some people hurt themselves in prison. My brother recommended James Gilligan, a prison psychiatrist, and his insights and understanding of it shaped the central character in my book. It’s troubling but fascinating reading for anyone who’s interested in understanding this.

Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer books were my introduction to the American private-detective novel. Macdonald’s work is psychologically and morally complex, with the sins of previous generations cascading through time to horrific, homicidal effects on Archer’s clients.

In Sleeping Beauty, Archer tries to help a wealthy family with more trouble than any single family should have to deal with—including a missing girl, an oil spill, a ransom demand, and a corpse floating off a private beach. As Archer works his case, he untangles long-lost memories, the results of arrogant decisions, and the pained, twisted relations between parents and children. Sleeping Beauty is gritty and taut. Terrific detective fiction.

To my mind, Macdonald is the greatest of American mystery writers, yet he appears to be all but forgotten. Writing in the tradition of Chandler and Hammett—and sharing their California setting—he surpasses them both as a writer and a student of human nature. I find his detective, Lew Archer, a believable and appealing character. A decent and compassionate man, he’s as tough as needs be, but no tougher. The Underground Man is Macdonald’s best, a complex and haunting story in which a routine search for a missing person leads Archer into a twisted family heritage of death and betrayal that has festered, hidden, for decades, and has now burst forth in deadly fashion. 

If there is one central defining quality of noir crime fiction, it is the main character’s struggle to preserve his moral center in a fundamentally corrupt and evil world. The best P.I. novels are able to render this kind of character in brushstrokes that are both beautiful and subtle.

One of my favorites is Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, first introduced in this novel. When Archer is hired to find a missing rich guy in a tony, Southern California beach town, he finds himself knee-deep in violence, greed, and deceit, uncertain of who is guilty, who he can trust, and even who is worth saving. A moving target, indeed.

Ross MacDonald is one of the classic detective series that features a damaged leading character who finds more trouble than he knows. Many people have told us our writing style is similar to his. If you want to read classic noir, read this book. His books are hidden gems that beg to be discovered.

This twisty, hypnotic story by the great Ross Macdonald focuses on the dark side of the Hollywood dream.

Private detective Lew Archer is drawn into the search for a missing woman, Hester Campbell-Wall, who seemed poised on the cusp of success via an oblique connection to Helio-Graff Studios when she vanished after a frantic phone call to her estranged husband.

Against his better judgment Archer agrees to look for Hester, a quest that pits him against the powerful and corrupt studio head, Simon Graff. The book is full of complex characters who are neither all good nor all bad, despite their acts of betrayal, deceit, and even murder.

That’s what makes them so poignant and believable: in various ways, they are all broken by dreams that didn’t come true. 

The first of Sue Grafton’s groundbreaking alphabet series, this humorous, engaging series is told by private investigator, Kinsey Milhone. In book one, we find the tough, smart Kinsey setting up her detective agency office while taking the case of Nikki Fife, out on parole for killing her husband. Nikki hires Kinsey to discover who really killed him.   

I love Kinsey Milhone, every book reveals her smarts as well as her humor and humanity. Sue Grafton is mystery writer whose books I grabbed up as soon as they were published. I have read every one of her alphabet series. I would tell a friend that A Is For Alibi is funny and has a terrific, main character. I grew up on Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and others, but Grafton’s work presented me with a whole new kind of mystery. My mysteries are written in this tradition and readers often compare them… show more.