Here are 100 books that The Marlow Murder Club fans have personally recommended if you like
The Marlow Murder Club.
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I adore crime fiction, especially mysteries. They make sense. In the real world, crime rarely has the resolution of fiction, and almost never has Belgian detectives with very neat moustaches, or old ladies solving a who-dunnit… I grew up reading these books, mentally inhaling everything from Christie to Rankin to McDermid, and now I spend my days writing brutal but quite silly murders solved by a woman who would really rather wear an old grey fleece and jeans than a sparkly dress, and her friends, the fictional TRASH drag family. Murder mysteries are fun – perfect escapism. In a world so messed up as ours is right now, don’t we need to escape into fiction?
I hate this book for all the reasons I love it: because it’s perfect.
It’s a perfect crime novel and a perfect mystery, with perfectly awful characters, set in a perfectly fabulous situation, and as a mystery writer I know I will never ever top Christie’s brilliance – but oh my, any chance I have, I fall into this story.
Romance. Deception. Murder. Shiny things.
Genius.
Forget the movie, pick up the real thing. Poirot at his best.
THE MOST WIDELY READ MYSTERY OF ALL TIME—NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY KENNETH BRANAGH AND PRODUCED BY RIDLEY SCOTT!
“The murderer is with us—on the train now . . .”
Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Without a shred of doubt, one of his fellow passengers is the murderer.
Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man’s…
I started reading mysteries as a way to avoid studying for final exams as an undergrad. Nemesis by Agatha Christie was my gateway mystery. That was fifty-plus years and many, many mysteries read ago. I managed an independent bookstore for several years and then worked in a public library for twenty more. I especially liked introducing readers to my favorite mysteries in the store and the library. Why mysteries in particular? Because they do something that doesn’t often happen in real life—they restore order. But the best mysteries, to my mind, are the ones that include humor. We need humor in our lives because it restores hope.
Now I’m torn. Agnes Sharp and her housemates are delightful, but a friend of mine tells me that I am Joyce in this book. This series is one of the best I’ve read in the past few years, and this book is one of the best ones in the series.
I’ll gladly join septuagenarians Elizabeth (could she have worked for Scotland Yard?), Ibrahim (a psychologist), Ron (a brawling socialist organizer), and Joyce (gentle and perhaps not as naïve as she seems) at their posh retirement village as they discuss unsolved crimes each Thursday. And I’m definitely there to solve the murder of that local developer. No way the villain will get away from this brilliant gang of sleuths.
A New York Times bestseller | Soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment
"Witty, endearing and greatly entertaining." -Wall Street Journal
"Don't trust anyone, including the four septuagenarian sleuths in Osman's own laugh-out-loud whodunit." -Parade
Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her first big case A brutal murder Welcome to... THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club.
I grew up reading Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and everything British. My first novel celebrated American literature and small towns, and my first murder mystery was a love letter to England. I once spent twenty days visiting almost thirty bookshops and reading my way all over England, and let me tell you, I learned a thing or two about murders.
What could be more quintessentially British than Her Majesty, the Queen, solving murders at her different castles? Her Majesty The Queen Investigates is a charming series based on meticulous research. It offers fascinating insights into the large organization surrounding the palace and a convincing portrait of the Queen herself.
With just the right amount of corgis and murders, Her Majesty the Queen Investigates is a cozy murder series to delight all anglophiles. Fans of The Crown will be especially pleased—the fourth book in the series, A Death in Diamonds, is the start of a historical trilogy.
For fans of The Crown and The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. On a perfect Spring morning at Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II will enjoy a cup of tea, carry out all her royal duties . . . and solve a murder.
'Like an episode of The Crown - but with a spicy dish of murder on the side' (DAILY MAIL) ______________________
The morning after a dinner party at Windsor Castle, eighty-nine-year-old Queen Elizabeth is shocked to discover that one of her guests has been found murdered in his room, with a rope around his neck.
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…
I’ve always been besotted with crime fiction. As a journalist in Scotland, I got to experience real-life crime on a daily basis. And the world of cozy crime fiction became a very valuable, indispensable escape for me. So, when it came to coming up with my characters for The Bingo Hall Detectives, I knew that I had to create a cast, a setting, a mystery even, that would take me out of the relentlessness of the real world and into the confines of a bloody good read. And I’m so glad I did. The Bingo Hall Detectives series is very dear to me and I’m very lucky to be able to bring it to readers.
I know it’s a bit of a cheat to have Sherlock Holmes here as he’s one of, if not the most famous detective in all of fiction.
However, he’s not an official cop so I’m claiming him for my list.
I remember being gifted a complete works of ACD when I was around 14 for a birthday. And I absolutely adored it from the off.
Like so many other crime and mystery writers, the Sherlock Holmes stories have been a constant, a mainstay throughout my career.
The Sign of Four is the second adventure with Holmes and Watson. And I recently re-read it for the Bloody Scotland Book Club.
It’s remarkable how well it’s aged, despite being over 100 years old. The tropes, style, and attention to forensic detail that ACD shows off are still used in crime fiction today. A truly wonderful masterpiece.
As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her. And in the ensuing investigation - which involves a wronged woman,…
I’ve loved mysteries since I gobbled up Nancy Drew and the Encyclopedia Brown books in grade school. As I grew older, I got hooked on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, and Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski. Besides being a diehard fan of female sleuths, I have a B.S. in Journalism, which drummed the importance of “who-what-when-where-and-why” into my brain. I definitely take a reporter’s mindset into my story-telling, particularly when it comes to the “who.” Breathing life into characters is crucial. Maybe that’s why I used bits and pieces of my grandma Helen in order to create my fictional Helen. Plus, it gives me a chance to spend time with her again, if only in my imagination.
Though this is Penny’s first in the “Three Pines” series featuring CI Armand Gamache, I’ll confess that I initially read it out of order. I picked up a later Penny book and liked it well enough to go back and start from the beginning.
This book feels like a debut. The writing is good, but not quite as sure-handed as more recent books (which makes sense). It introduces us to Armand Gamache, a seasoned detective if ever there was one, and to the cast of characters in Three Pines.
By the time I finished it the first time around, I’d become a legit Gamache fan-girl. This series is one of the few that I’m so enamored with that I pre-order forthcoming titles. ‘Nuff said.
In Still Life, bestselling author Louise Penny introduces Monsieur L'Inspecteur Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec, a modern Poirot who anchors this beloved traditional mystery series.
Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain…
Given the state of the world today, laughter truly is the best coping mechanism. The best satire is all about excess in design, intention, characterization, and deployment of attitude. The more extreme, the better; leave restraint to the prudish moralists!
Really hard to pick just one Pynchon for this list, as he is an all-around master of satire. But Inherent Vice is probably his LOL funniest, a stoner take on the detective genre set in the hippie world of 1970s southern California. The cinematic adaptation by Paul Thomas Anderson ain’t half bad, either.
Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon-Private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era
In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there.
It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex- girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail…
After solving her first case, private eye Siobhan O’Brien is hired by Phillip Ahn, an octogenarian billionaire with his own personal island in the Pacific Northwest. Ahn, a genius in artificial intelligence, swears that Duke, his youngest child and only son, is an impostor. Is Ahn crazy, or is Duke…
I’ve loved mysteries since I gobbled up Nancy Drew and the Encyclopedia Brown books in grade school. As I grew older, I got hooked on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, and Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski. Besides being a diehard fan of female sleuths, I have a B.S. in Journalism, which drummed the importance of “who-what-when-where-and-why” into my brain. I definitely take a reporter’s mindset into my story-telling, particularly when it comes to the “who.” Breathing life into characters is crucial. Maybe that’s why I used bits and pieces of my grandma Helen in order to create my fictional Helen. Plus, it gives me a chance to spend time with her again, if only in my imagination.
Christie’s Jane Marple inspired me to write mysteries. As Miss Marple made her starring debut in Murder at the Vicarage, it holds a dear place in my heart.
In quaint St. Mary’s Mead, a man named Colonel Protheroe meets with foul play, and it’s Miss Marple’s keen insights that prove invaluable. Jane Marple may be “of a certain age,” but she’s as sharp as a tack. I admire how Christie plunks the reader right into the story, introducing would-be suspects at a rapid pace, particularly Miss Marple, who takes tea with the Vicar’s younger wife and spills plenty of tea in the process.
This one’s a classic for lovers of traditional mysteries like me!
The Murder at the Vicarage is Agatha Christie’s first mystery to feature the beloved investigator Miss Marple—as a dead body in a clergyman’s study proves to the indomitable sleuth that no place, holy or otherwise, is a sanctuary from homicide.
Miss Marple encounters a compelling murder mystery in the sleepy little village of St. Mary Mead, where under the seemingly peaceful exterior of an English country village lurks intrigue, guilt, deception and death.
Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing land-owner is the most detested man in the village. Everyone--even in the vicar--wishes he were dead. And very soon he is--shot…
I adore crime fiction, especially mysteries. They make sense. In the real world, crime rarely has the resolution of fiction, and almost never has Belgian detectives with very neat moustaches, or old ladies solving a who-dunnit… I grew up reading these books, mentally inhaling everything from Christie to Rankin to McDermid, and now I spend my days writing brutal but quite silly murders solved by a woman who would really rather wear an old grey fleece and jeans than a sparkly dress, and her friends, the fictional TRASH drag family. Murder mysteries are fun – perfect escapism. In a world so messed up as ours is right now, don’t we need to escape into fiction?
Great characters, high drama over a toilet, and a very murdery murder. Perfect cozy crime.
Canon Daniel Clement stands between two sides of a war over the installation of a new toilet in the church. The writing is gentle and yet brilliant, comfortable and funny, and also has moments of poignant tenderness.
I adore crime fiction, especially mysteries. They make sense. In the real world, crime rarely has the resolution of fiction, and almost never has Belgian detectives with very neat moustaches, or old ladies solving a who-dunnit… I grew up reading these books, mentally inhaling everything from Christie to Rankin to McDermid, and now I spend my days writing brutal but quite silly murders solved by a woman who would really rather wear an old grey fleece and jeans than a sparkly dress, and her friends, the fictional TRASH drag family. Murder mysteries are fun – perfect escapism. In a world so messed up as ours is right now, don’t we need to escape into fiction?
Think Rentaghost, but with a dead, sulky teenager running the show.
I read this for review and I loved this book so much. It’s great fun and sassy as hell, and the deaths – and the dead – are very well written.
A play on the classic country house mystery, Grave Expectations pulls together nods to true crime and to clairvoyance, adding a dash of modern pop culture.
A pacy and hilarious debut crime novel, in which a burnt-out Millennial medium must utilize her ability to see ghosts to figure out which member(s) of a posh English family are guilty of murder.
Almost-authentic medium Claire and her best friend, Sophie, agree to take on a seemingly simple job at a crumbling old manor in the English countryside: performing a seance for the family matriarch's 80th birthday. The pair have been friends since before Sophie went missing when they were seventeen. Everyone else is convinced Sophie simply ran away, but Claire knows the truth. Claire knows Sophie was murdered…
Buried Secrets. A web of deceit, betrayal, and danger. Can she survive her fight for justice and truth? Laura thought she knew everything about her late husband before he died. Now, her life and the lives of those she loves are in danger. As Laura delves into his previous role…
I adore crime fiction, especially mysteries. They make sense. In the real world, crime rarely has the resolution of fiction, and almost never has Belgian detectives with very neat moustaches, or old ladies solving a who-dunnit… I grew up reading these books, mentally inhaling everything from Christie to Rankin to McDermid, and now I spend my days writing brutal but quite silly murders solved by a woman who would really rather wear an old grey fleece and jeans than a sparkly dress, and her friends, the fictional TRASH drag family. Murder mysteries are fun – perfect escapism. In a world so messed up as ours is right now, don’t we need to escape into fiction?
Darker than the others on my list, this is a dip into the world of true crime podcasts and a really twisty, edgy read.
The main character, Cal Lovett, is passionate about justice, and about getting to the root of a crime – not just for the family and the people involved, but for doing the right thing.
This book kept me awake until I’d finished it, and blew me away by the end.
The word ‘gripping’ is massively overused in crime fiction reviews but Unsolved is as gripping as a gripping thing that grips the reader. Hard.
'A remarkable suspense debut... exciting and unsettling.' A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window
He won't rest until he finds out the truth...
Cal Lovett is obsessed with finding justice for the families of missing people. His true crime podcast is his way of helping others, even if he can't help himself.
His sister, Margot, disappeared when he was a child. Only one man seems to know something. But he's behind bars and can't be trusted.
So when the family of a missing Scottish woman begs for his help, he heads to Aberdeenshire in search of the truth.…
