100 books like The Kind Worth Killing

Legal Thrillers: The Defense by Steve Cavanagh is the best legal thriller I’ve ever read. Eddie Flynn, a former con artist turned lawyer, is forced to defend the head of the Russian mob in New York City who is on trial for murder. But that’s just the beginning of this Perry-Mason-on-steroids thriller as Flynn brings his A-game to thwart their plans and free his kidnapped daughter. Sleep in late the day you begin reading this legal thriller as you won’t sleep again until after you’ve finished it. Then you’ll be thrilled to discover that Cavanagh’s written several more Eddie Flynn thrillers (The Plea, Thirteen, The Liar).

Military Thrillers: One Rough Man by Brad Taylor is the first novel in Taylor’s Pike Logan/Jennifer Cahill series. Taylor’s Logan/Cahill novels are currently the best military thrillers on the scene as Pike and Jennifer and their team of commandos dash across the globe kicking terrorist ass. I picked One Rough Man because it contains the duo’s origin story (you’ve got to have that), but you’ll be delighted to know there’s about 15 more Logan/Cahill thrillers just waiting for you (Taylor’s a prolific author). So grab One Rough Man and begin the Logan/Cahill saga. Meanwhile, I’ll sit back and await your thank you note.

Michael Connelly is the immensely successful author of the Harry Bosch books, but The Poet is the first book in his much shorter Jack McEvoy series.

McEvoy is a reporter who has a penchant for chasing down serial killers, and unfortunately becoming a target as well.

The psychological horror here comes from Connelly’s exacting and precise account of who the killer, dubbed the Poet, is and how he came to be.

I discovered this along with McEvoy and came to realization that he was becoming a target before he did. It’s a long book, but I found that I did not want to put it down before I learned how it played out.

Supernatural Thrillers: Every Dead Thing by John Connolly is the first novel in Connolly’s Charlie Parker series (it contains Parker’s origin story). If you like your thrillers with a blood-curdling slice of the supernatural, run, don’t walk, to the nearest bookstore and pick up this novel. Haunted by his dead wife and daughter, Parker is an ex-cop turned private detective. And the cases Parker works—Good Lord!—best sleep with the lights on. Though John Connolly’s an Irish lad, his Parker novels take place along the East Coast (Parker lives in Portland, Maine). You’ll realize how literary and poetic Connolly’s prose is as the hairs on the back of your neck begin to rise and you refuse to investigate that sound you just heard coming from the basement.

The scene is set at the start of this book with a prologue, a journal entry from one of the main characters, Dr Sheehan. It’s as if I’m reading his mind, or he is talking to me, the reader, and so we hit the ground running instantly–because when someone is talking to you, you listen.

The author took the time to paint vivid images in my head, but the story wasn’t slow. He was scene-setting, and it drew me right in. The twists were clever, the dialogue was natural, and it is understandable why Hollywood snapped up the rights to this book. For me, though, the way we get to know and understand Teddy Daniels and his troubles was just great storytelling. 

I love this 1926 Agatha Christie standout, famed for pioneering the use of red herrings and misdirection.

With Hercule Poirot at the helm, Agatha Christie's renowned detective delves into a case investigating a series of murders linked to the mysterious Roger Ackroyd.

As always, Christie delivers a captivating and confounding mystery that kept me on my toes throughout!

Don’t let the setting or the gentle nature of the prose deter you. What seems like a collection of modest short stories, set among the small shops of a Tokyo neighborhood, coalesces into an intricate puzzle in which the whole is even more satisfying than the sum of its charming parts. The suspects tell the police detective, a patient and polite newcomer to the area, about their modest lives and insular worlds, not realizing how all these gossipy and petty details will lead to the truth. And who knew there were so many different types of scissors, each with a specific, very traditional use!

This is the second mystery in the Kyoichiro Kaga series and my favorite.

A forensic anthropologist tackles three murders, separated by time but united by their theme, the evil that men do – and by men, I mean the male of the species. The outrageous humor and atmospheric southern setting draw you in, and you don’t realize until too late how your expectations have been overturned.

The eighth book in the Elizabeth MacPherson series.

I love Hank Phillippi Ryan’s books, and I love big court trials, so it makes perfect sense that I loved this book.

Ryan–who is an award-winning TV journalist as well as a best-selling thriller author–started covering the murder trial of Casey Anthony, the mother who made headlines for allegedly killing her two-year-old daughter Caylee and hiding the body for months, with the idea of doing a non-fiction book about the case.

But, when Anthony was found not guilty by the jury, Ryan switched gears and came up with the idea of doing a mesmerizing fictional novel inspired by a case such as Casey Anthony. The result is a must-read!

This book fascinated me. I love a book told backwards, which is really how this book is told.

Jen’s 18-year-old son commits murder. She doesn’t know the man he’s killed and she doesn’t know why he did it. The only thing she does know is that her life, and the life of her son, is over. Until she wakes up the next day to find that it is the morning of the murder. Can she stop it from happening?

Each night following she wakes up earlier and earlier, travelling backwards through time in hopes to solve the mystery of who her son kills and why before it ever happens. The unique premise kept me riveted until the surprising conclusion.