Fans pick 81 books like The Line That Held Us

Matt Goldman has led an interesting career. His roots are in comedy, having been a successful Hollywood TV writer on shows like Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Ellen. But he made the unlikely career shift becoming a successful crime writer with his Nils Shapiro detective series. Carolina Moonset, his latest, is a standalone novel that tells the story of a young man who visits his family in his childhood home, Beaufort, South Carolina. His father suffers from Lewy Body dementia. He has trouble remembering what he had for breakfast but still connects to rich, childhood memories, some of which concern both a past and present-day crime.

Goldman is especially strong when it comes to depicting a family torn apart by the ravages of this insidious disease. But Goldman skillfully creates a mystery that grabs the reader and won’t let go. As someone who… show more.

Reed Farrel Coleman, called “a hard-boiled poet,” and a “noir laureate” has written somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty crime novels, including a number of Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone novels. One of my favorites is Where it Hurts, which features divorced, retired cop Gus Murphy who’s picked up part-time work as a courtesy van driver for a run-down hotel. The only thing that interrupts his mindless routine comes when ex-con Tommy Delcamino asks Gus to investigate the mysterious death of his son. Coleman is particularly strong when it comes to character. This book especially resonates with me because of Coleman’s ability to dig deep inside his character’s psyche, not only examining how they tick but why they tick. His books, especially this one, are tightly plotted but for me the real attraction is his examination of personal, moral dilemmas. I’m especially attracted to and admiring of Coleman’s books,… show more.

Tom Straw is another one who came to crime writing via a circuitous route. For many years, he’s been a very successful TV writer for shows like Night Court, Nurse Jackie, Grace Under Fire, Craig Ferguson (he still is) but when asked to become “Richard Castle,” the fictional crime writer who works alongside a New York City female cop for the ABC-TV series Castle, he said yes and immediately became a best-selling crime writer. Buzz Killer is the first novel he wrote under his own name and he makes good use of all those skills he honed as a TV writer. NYC public defender Maci Wild takes on the homicide case of a burglar the tabloids call the Buzz Killer because of MO of lobby-buzzing apartments to select his targets. She forms a partnership with Gunnar Cody, an ex-cop from NYPD’s elite surveillance unit. Along the way, they cross… show more.

This is the first in the Franky Dast series and it was nominated for a Shamus Award. Dast was convicted and sentenced to Death Row when he was 18, for the rape and murder of two adolescent boys. Eight years later, the verdict is overturned, in part as a result of the relationship Dast has established with the Justice Now Initiative, an organization specializing in cases of wrongful imprisonment. On his release, Dast joins the group and becomes involved in a case that hits close to home: the cop who arrested and coerced a confession from him is accused of shooting the son of a prominent judge. In Dast, Wiley has created the kind of complex character I’m drawn to, both as a writer and a reader. Wiley’s ability to dive deep into the psyche of complicated characters is something I’m always striving for.

Iron House, short for the Iron Mountain Home for Boys, is a thriller that features orphaned brothers: weakling Julian, and his strong and fiercely protective brother, Michael. After being bullied to the point of cracking, Julian kills his abuser. Michael escapes Iron House and takes the blame as he leaves.

This leads the brothers on two very different paths. Julian is adopted and, though mentally unbalanced, becomes a writer of dark children’s stories. Michael is also adopted off the streets by the head of a crime syndicate who teaches him how to kill. Iron House is a complicated story of abuse, torment, and love. The book is not for the faint of heart.

This 2002 novel follows young Harriet Cleve Dufresnes in 1970s Mississippi during the aftermath of the death of her nine-year-old brother, who was killed by hanging in the shadow of unexplained circumstances. I am particularly enamored by the novel’s focus on the customs and dynamics of Harriet’s extended Southern family.

Tartt best describes in her own words why I love this novel: It is “a frightening, scary book about children coming into contact with the world of adults frighteningly.”  

Long Way Down does an incredible job of telling such a contained story, telling everything within the span of a single elevator ride.

Reynolds uses the elevator trip to make the protagonist encounter ghosts of multiple dead people in his community, all connected to his murdered brother, and question if vengeance is the right answer to his grief. This is a well-deserved classic, and a must-read for all novel-in-verse fans!

I love surprises and characters who are not what they seem, and I enjoy a high-tech backdrop when it fits the story. When a character thinks he sees evidence of a crime in what’s basically Google Street View, he will not let go of it and drags our unwilling protagonist into danger.

I loved the emotional core of a man dealing with his brother’s mental health issues and the blossoming romance in his life.

Collins’ The Family Plot is set Blackburn Island, off the coast of Rhode Island where the Lighthouse Family lived in a secluded mansion deep in the woods and isolated by their true-crime-obsessed parents.

After her twin brother disappears when they are sixteen, Dahlia leaves home at the earliest opportunity, returning years later after her father’s death. When the family goes to bury him, there is already a body in his grave—her brother’s.

The layered family drama, secrets, and one hell of a twist make this the kind of story I love—layered with tension and impossible to put down. 

In interviews, Paul Howarth has discussed the ways in which colonial Australia was essentially a second Wild West, albeit one scarcely explored in fiction. Only Killers and Thieves leans into that understanding and in doing so creates a vivid, blood-soaked, Biblical saga about revenge, redemption, and the lies upon which nations are built, full of unforgettable characters and passages of writing that will make your breath catch. That it is followed by an even better sequel is the icing on a magnificent cake.