Here are 35 books that The Neon Rain fans have personally recommended if you like
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Kate Watterson is the author of thriller novels for various publishers, and has always been a fan of the suspense genre. Good tension and a bit of danger balanced by an investigator who is on the trail, and she turns pages into the night. It is all about the hunt and the solution in her opinion, and of course, being perched on the edge of your seat.
When Daniel Roke takes on an unusual job he does it for monetary and personal reasons and has no idea he is risking his life. Dick Francis takes you from Australia to the world of English horseracing with a clever plot that is unexpected and has a really wicked twist. He also can deliver some villains that inspire visceral dislike like no other author and doesn’t let you down in this intense novel. Well done and kept me doing the infamous reading into the night.
Common sense said that the whole idea was crazy . . . but when offered huge sums of money to move to England and help the Earl of October uncover a suspected racehorse dope scandal, Danny Roke finds the proposal intriguing.
Swapping his job as proprietor of an Australian stud farm to work undercover as a stable hand in Yorkshire, Danny soon has his hands full. Whilst the Earl's attractive daughters Patricia and Elinor draw his attention, he finds himself ever more deeply involved with the vicious swindlers he is out to entrap. And if neither the money nor the…
Kate Watterson is the author of thriller novels for various publishers, and has always been a fan of the suspense genre. Good tension and a bit of danger balanced by an investigator who is on the trail, and she turns pages into the night. It is all about the hunt and the solution in her opinion, and of course, being perched on the edge of your seat.
Let’s talk about memorable beginnings and I am talking about the kind that will keep you awake at night. Sanford is gritty and he really pushes the edge with his villains. On that note, he really pushes the edge with his protagonists as well, because Lucas Davenport is one of my favorite cops. Take one very smart (but seriously disturbed villain) and one very smart (but intense cop) and pit them against each other.
As Lucas weaves through the unfathomable workings of the brain of someone who is truly unhinged, he encounters an unholy marriage of two killers who operate on a separate plane yet have a common goal and the result is chilling to say the least.
The Prey novels are never for the faint of heart, but always fast-paced and well-written, suspense being the end game each time.
Lucas Davenport, "one of the best hard-case cops on the crime scene today" (Houston Post) returns in this explosive novel in John Sandford's #1 New York Times bestselling Prey series...
Lieutenant Davenport's sanity was nearly shattered by two murder investigations. Now he faces something worse...Two killers. One hideously scarred. The other strikingly handsome, a master manipulator fascinated with all aspects of death. The dark mirror of Davenport's soul...This is the case that will bring Davenport back to life. Or push him over the edge.
Ghost stories have fascinated me since I was a small child, even when they gave me nightmares every night. I've never lived in a haunted house, been part of a cursed family, or been kidnapped by highwaymen and villainous villains, but I've always sensed some people never leave this world. Despite the nightmares, I also believe ghosts aren't always vengeful spirits but loved ones, beings of light who sometimes just want to say hi. I have been writing stories since I learned to write. Ghost stories have always been a part of me, and I hope to shed a different light on this gloomy genre.
Remember when schools handed out a catalog of books for you to order? I do. I chose this book when I was about eleven years old, and while even then I was already reading Caroline B. Cooney and Richie Tankersley Cusick, this book took my childhood love of ghost stories and nudged it into my adolescence and adulthood.
Twin houses, the Civil War and broken families are the backdrop to the principal theme of young and forbidden love across the ages. Jealousy, revenge and a love which is not quite right live within the walls of these houses. Here, the places are not born evil; they are made evil by common human emotions allowed to fester and never laid to rest.
I have read it at least five times and love it still. Barbara Michaels is one of my favorite Gothic writers, and this book holds a vast place in…
Ghosts, a mysterious diary and a harrowing of a family split by the American Civil War sit at the heart of The Walker in the Shadows, a haunting Gothic romance by New York Times bestseller Barbara Michaels.
The house next door to Pat Robbins - eerily identical to the home she shares with her teenage son, Mark - has been empty for years. And it's not surprising, as there's a feeling of darkness radiating from the house that seems to scare everyone away.
But now new tenants are moving in: friendly Josef and his lovely daughter, Kathy, who has stolen…
Kate Watterson is the author of thriller novels for various publishers, and has always been a fan of the suspense genre. Good tension and a bit of danger balanced by an investigator who is on the trail, and she turns pages into the night. It is all about the hunt and the solution in her opinion, and of course, being perched on the edge of your seat.
If as a suspense fan you missed this one, shame on you. Well, let’s picture a haunted castle on Rhine with a murdered magician, an eccentric cast of characters, a very astute detective, and his pragmatic American assistant investigating the crime.
Carr never cheats on plot and he always delivers on drama. His timing is just exquisite. You are given everything but you still have an ah-ha moment (usually more than one) as events unfold. It is a timeless setting and story tension so high that I could see the flicker of the lights and hear the rush of the river.
The twists are so unpredictable you are truly blindsided.
If you like a dramatic setting and unpredictable conflict, I recommend it.
'That is the case. Alison has been murdered. His blazing body was seen running about the battlements of Castle Skull.' And so a dark shadow looms over the Rhineland where Inspector Henri Bencolin and his accomplice Jeff Marle have arrived from Paris. Entreated by the Belgian financier D'Aunay to investigate the gruesome and grimly theatrical death of actor Myron Alison, the pair find themselves at the imposing hilltop fortress Schloss Schadel, in which a small group of suspects are still assembled. As thunder rolls in the distance, Bencolin and Marle enter a world steeped in macabre legends of murder and…
My love of British crime fiction began when, as a young teen, I discovered Agatha Christie on the shelves of my local library. With Scottish grandparents, I was already well indoctrinated in the “everything British is best” theory, but it was as a student at St. Clare’s College, Oxford, that I fell totally under the spell of the British Isles. No surprise, then, that my Kate Hamilton Mystery series is set in the UK and features an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. I love to read the classic mysteries of the Golden Age as well as authors today who follow that tradition.
Since the publication of Dorothy L. Sayer’sThe Unpleasantness at the Bellona Clubin 1928, London’s gentlemen’s clubs, bastions of upper-class male privilege, have been fertile ground for murder and mayhem. Huang’s debut novel is set in 1924. With the memory of the Great War still fresh in everyone’s minds, the prestigious soldiers-only Britannia Club is rocked by the stabbing of a member within the club vaults. The killer must be a fellow club member, but when Eric Peterkin, descendant of one of the club’s founders, witnesses the Scotland Yard detective tampering with evidence, he is forced to launch an investigation of his own.
The year is 1924. The streets of St. James ring with jazz as Britain races forward into an age of peace and prosperity. London's back alleys, however, are filled with broken soldiers and still shadowed by the lingering horrors of the Great War.
Only a few years removed from the trenches of Flanders himself, Lieutenant Eric Peterkin has just been granted membership in the most prestigious soldiers-only club in London: The Britannia. But when a gentleman's wager ends with a member stabbed to death, the victim's last words echo in the Lieutenant's head: that he would "soon right a great…
I’d always known about the Lady of the Dunes. I’d read about how she was found in the dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, on July 26, 1974. I didn’t know about the tens of thousands of other unidentified victims like her, stowed around the US in the back rooms of morgues and unmarked graves. As a journalist who has always given a voice to those who struggle to be heard, I feel compelled to research and write about these Jane and John Does and the people who work to keep their cases in the public eye. I share a unique bond with writers who do the same.
Many get obsessed with cold cases involving Jane and John Does, and Sue Grafton was no exception. After a chance encounter with the forensic pathologist who investigated a Jane Doe who had been discovered near a quarry in Santa Barbara County, California, in 1969, Grafton incorporated the true story into one of her iconic works of fiction.
Sue Grafton delivers an intensely gripping mystery based on an actual unsolved murder in this #1 New York Times bestseller featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone.
She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California's Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the murder remained unsolved...
I am fascinated by all that was happening in the world before WWII. Amidst a silent, looming economic collapse, many social norms were turned on their head, women broke out of their molds, and art, literature, technology, and music all flourished. And a heady mix of cultures blended not altogether seamlessly to influence the Roaring Twenties like no other decade before it. The juxtaposition of this exciting yet challenging tumult lures me into reading books and writing immigrant-forward stories about this period—and as an author with deep roots in the boot—I particularly enjoy doing so through an Italian lens.
I fell in love with Miss Phryne Fisher on TV first, then in all of the books only after binge-watching all the seasons in short order. Her attitude, her clothes, her wit—all of it makes her adventures so fun to read. Besides, what list of Jazz Age mysteries is complete without this bobbed-hair socialite and her gaggle of misfits helping her to solve mysteries? Add in a spa vacation for Phyrne and I was hooked to see how she solved a murder while on holiday in some fabulous resort town. After 7 years, my Phryne drought is over!
'. . . there is no doubt Phryne is back at her best.' The Book Muse
When a mysterious invitation arrives for Miss Phryne Fisher from an unknown Captain Herbert Spencer in Victoria's spa country, Phryne's curiosity is excited.
Phryne accepts Spencer's invitation but from their arrival, she and her loyal maid Dot are thrown into the midst of disturbing Highland gatherings, cases of disappearing women, murder and the mystery of the Temperance Hotel.
Meanwhile, Cec, Bert and Tinker find a young woman floating face down in the harbour. Tinker, with Jane and Ruth, Phryne's resilient adopted daughters, together decide…
I walked to the library every Saturday to find a new mystery. I think I read everyone and read some more than once. As I matured, I discovered the mixture of romance and suspense I was hooked. I literally read every book in the genre’ at my local library.
Intricately woven romantic suspense set in New Orleans.
I
love a book where the ending is a surprise, and the characters are entertaining
and intelligent. You will fall in love with the secondary characters. Gabe is a
chef who father is dead, but the authorities call it a suicide. He doesn’t
believe it and hires a private investigator, Molly.
There are good cops and
some really bad cops. Fantastic ride. Finished it in one sitting.
The truth of what happened that night lies with a secret witness.
Quarter to Midnight is the first thrilling novel in a brand new series by Sunday Times bestselling author Karen Rose, set in New Orleans.
Rocky Hebert walks into his death at quarter to midnight one New Orleans night.
His son Gabe cannot accept the official verdict of suicide and enlists the help of the Burke Broussard Private Investigation Agency to discover the real cause of death.
PI Molly Sutton knows what it's like to lose a father in tragic circumstances and will go to any lengths to crack…
All of the books I’ve listed above have flawed characters. Characters that deal with emotional and/or moral dilemmas. The plots: murder, missing children, or runaway husbands are secondary to me. What I look for in a book and what I write about in my Cole and Callahan series, are characters with flaws. People who struggle with truth. Cops or investigators that hide or skew evidence because the truth would cause more harm than good. It’s the moral dilemma I want. The angst we all feel when we are faced with a particularly painful decision. That’s what real life is and that’s what brings a book and a character to life.
Cormoran Strike and his business partner, Robin Ellacott, are searching for a missing writer who has penned a scathing novel, revealing his friend's most tightly held secrets. Any one of them would be happy to take him out. Ellacott and Strike are hired by his wife to find him. They do, brutally murdered. Besides facing a plethora of possible murderers, Strike and Ellacott face that there’s more than a working relationship evolving between them. But with Stike’s recent break-up and Ellacott’s live-in boyfriend, feelings are buried. After they solve their twisted case, I’m on to the next book in the series to see how Cormoran and Robin will move forward together. I love a good mystery and I love a relationship plagued with obstacles. The Silkworm delivers on both.
'Teems with sly humour, witty asides and intelligence ... A pleasure to read' TIMES
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Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.
But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost…
I have picked these books because I have a passion for good reading material. All the books I have chosen have become reading classics in their own way. They are well written and have plots that go well beyond normal literature in a sense that they unveil the 'human condition' into the realm of the protagonist being up against all odds, where in the end, truth reveals all!
This book was a birthday gift from a good friend and fellow writer at The Guardian. It captured my interest immediately because I enjoy Patterson. This exciting action thriller explores the seedy life of Las Vegas, where love and murder are lost and found for a few quick dollars.
I especially enjoyed his tale with wild twists, where his main character, Jack Morgan, is continually beaten down and challenged through incredible odds and tribulations.
Jack Morgan, head of Private Investigations, the global PI agency of the rich and famous, is being pushed to the limit. His car has been firebombed, his ex is dating someone else, and his twin brother is still out to destroy him.
But Private doesn't rest, and nor do its clients: not the LAPD who need Private's help catching two scumbags with diplomatic immunity, and not the client who has just confessed to murdering his wife.
Add to that Jack's best friend being held on a trumped-up charge that could see him locked away for a…
