Fans pick 76 books like The Widening Gyre

By Robert B. Parker,

Here are 76 books that The Widening Gyre fans have personally recommended if you like The Widening Gyre. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Hunter

Lono Waiwaiole Author Of Dark Paradise

From my list on the cost of doing business in the crime world.

Why am I passionate about this?

It’s all my father-in-law’s fault. Before I ran into him, I was a card-carrying “literary” high-brow. Shoot, I was reading Faulkner’s “The Bear” in high school and thought I would be the next generation Steinbeck if I ever got around to writing novels. But one weekend, while visiting my wife’s folks, I found myself with nothing to read—a problem solved by my father-in-law’s complete collection of Richard Stark novels. Those books knocked me head-over-heels, which is why when I did get around to writing novels, the first six were hard-edged crime fiction.

Lono's book list on the cost of doing business in the crime world

Lono Waiwaiole Why did Lono love this book?

This book pulled me from classical American literature (think Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Hemingway) to hardboiled crime fiction, and I haven’t come up for air since.

I was captured by both the substance and the style—the rich possibilities of an antihero protagonist delivered in a prose as direct and compelling as a bullet to the brain. After this one, I couldn’t stop until I had devoured the entire series!

By Richard Stark,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Hunter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

You probably haven't ever noticed them. But they've noticed you. They notice everything. That's their job. Sitting quietly in a nondescript car outside a bank making note of the tellers' work habits, the positions of the security guards. Lagging a few car lengths behind the Brinks truck on its daily rounds. Surreptitiously jiggling the handle of an unmarked service door at the racetrack.They're thieves. Heisters, to be precise. They're pros, and Parker is far and away the best of them. If you're planning a job, you want him in. Tough, smart, hardworking, and relentlessly focused on his trade, he is…


Book cover of Eight Million Ways to Die

Lono Waiwaiole Author Of Dark Paradise

From my list on the cost of doing business in the crime world.

Why am I passionate about this?

It’s all my father-in-law’s fault. Before I ran into him, I was a card-carrying “literary” high-brow. Shoot, I was reading Faulkner’s “The Bear” in high school and thought I would be the next generation Steinbeck if I ever got around to writing novels. But one weekend, while visiting my wife’s folks, I found myself with nothing to read—a problem solved by my father-in-law’s complete collection of Richard Stark novels. Those books knocked me head-over-heels, which is why when I did get around to writing novels, the first six were hard-edged crime fiction.

Lono's book list on the cost of doing business in the crime world

Lono Waiwaiole Why did Lono love this book?

This book grabbed me by the throat and threw me into a world I could literally feel spinning around me—a world in which good intentions don’t mean squat and random chance frequently outperforms the most carefully crafted of plans. Block always hits his target, but this one broke my heart along the way.

By Lawrence Block,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Eight Million Ways to Die as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it also—and she wanted out. Maybe Kim didn't deserve the life fate had dealt her. She surely didn't deserve her death. The alcoholic ex-cop turned p.i. was supposed to protect her, but someone slashed her to ribbons on a crumbling New York City waterfront pier. Now finding Kim's killer will be Scudder's penance. But there are lethal secrets hiding in the slain hooker's past that are far dirtier than her trade. And there are many ways of dying…


Book cover of Hell To Pay

Lono Waiwaiole Author Of Dark Paradise

From my list on the cost of doing business in the crime world.

Why am I passionate about this?

It’s all my father-in-law’s fault. Before I ran into him, I was a card-carrying “literary” high-brow. Shoot, I was reading Faulkner’s “The Bear” in high school and thought I would be the next generation Steinbeck if I ever got around to writing novels. But one weekend, while visiting my wife’s folks, I found myself with nothing to read—a problem solved by my father-in-law’s complete collection of Richard Stark novels. Those books knocked me head-over-heels, which is why when I did get around to writing novels, the first six were hard-edged crime fiction.

Lono's book list on the cost of doing business in the crime world

Lono Waiwaiole Why did Lono love this book?

I love the way this book got me beneath the glossy veneer of our national capital and made me come to grips with the cold reality hiding there. And the perfectly imperfect guides who took me on that trip are unforgettable creations, which I ultimately discovered is par for the course for Pelecanos. 

By George Pelecanos,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hell To Pay as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A fatal shooting that strikes too close to home leaves PI Derek Strange determined to find the killer - whatever the cost. From one of the award-winning writers of THE WIRE.

Set in darkest, downtown Washington, Hell to Pay begins with Quinn and Strange dealing with the usual detritus of the world's most violent city - a bent cop and a missing teenage-girl-turned-hooker - but then a senseless death on a sunny afternoon shakes even Derek Strange's existence.

A victim shot down by bullets meant for another; a tragic accident that strikes just too close to home. Strange's grief is…


Book cover of Flood

Lono Waiwaiole Author Of Dark Paradise

From my list on the cost of doing business in the crime world.

Why am I passionate about this?

It’s all my father-in-law’s fault. Before I ran into him, I was a card-carrying “literary” high-brow. Shoot, I was reading Faulkner’s “The Bear” in high school and thought I would be the next generation Steinbeck if I ever got around to writing novels. But one weekend, while visiting my wife’s folks, I found myself with nothing to read—a problem solved by my father-in-law’s complete collection of Richard Stark novels. Those books knocked me head-over-heels, which is why when I did get around to writing novels, the first six were hard-edged crime fiction.

Lono's book list on the cost of doing business in the crime world

Lono Waiwaiole Why did Lono love this book?

The protagonist of this book has to be based on the writer’s worst nightmare, and the version of NYC he inhabits is one of the blackest in all of crime fiction.

This protagonist is merciless, and so is Vachss—I once watched him tear a suburban mom to shreds at one of his book events for daring to suggest that all it takes to keep children safe in these times is to teach them about “stranger danger.” According to Vachss, it’s not strangers that children need to worry about—it’s the people closest to them.

By Andrew Vachss,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Flood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Burke's newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her-so she can kill him with her bare hands.

In this cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade investigator teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements. Fearfully knowing, crackling with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point…


Book cover of Small Vices

Adam Plantinga Author Of The Ascent

From my list on modern books on tough guys.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a 23-year city cop who spends a fair amount of time around hard cases, from veteran co-workers to repeat felons. I’ve always been fascinated by formidable fictional heroes who succeed despite overwhelming odds. It’s an art to create a protagonist who is memorably and realistically resilient. I strove for this in my debut novel. The authors above delivered and then some. 

Adam's book list on modern books on tough guys

Adam Plantinga Why did Adam love this book?

Parker’s Spenser is a reliable tough guy with a good heart. A former soldier and heavyweight boxer, he tends to make short work of anyone foolish enough to fight him. But in Small Vices, he is shot by the villainous Gray Man and left for dead. After he’s discharged from the hospital, Spenser has to readjust to a gravely weakened body as he struggles to physically and mentally recover from his wounds.

This journey brings a new level of emotional depth to the series and lends added resonance to round two with the Gray Man, during which Spenser describes himself as Lazarus, “back from the grave to tell all.”

By Robert B. Parker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Small Vices as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

While probing the murder of coed Melissa Henderson, a crime in which Ellis Alves is the prime suspect, Spenser finds himself the target of an assassin and must play dead to find out who wants him off the case. 175,000 first printing. $125,000 ad/promo. BOMC Main. Reader's Digest Cond Bks.


Book cover of The Big Dig

Why am I passionate about this?

I love to read mysteries, particularly those with recurring characters. As a lawyer with experience in criminal law and teaching college law courses, I particularly appreciate cerebral detectives and legal maneuvers, and active investigators doing legwork for cerebral types. When I write, my recurring characters come first, followed by the case plots that those characters would find interesting. I always have some ideas of where the case is going and what procedures would be followed from my legal experience. Still, my detectives seem to inspire scenes and activities that show off their particular virtues and personalities as the investigations proceed. This seems to be what happens in the detective stories I am recommending.

Lawrence's book list on mysteries with private detectives who pursue justice with both brilliant intellect and seat-of-the-pants, street smart action

Lawrence E. Rothstein Why did Lawrence love this book?

Like Paretsky’s V. I. and Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, six-foot, former police officer and intrepid Boston P.I. Carlotta Carlyle is dogged, street smart, and tough while navigating the vagaries of big city corruption and big money influence.

She is bored by her desk job undercover assignment investigating fraud in Boston’s Big Dig construction project. She craves the action that I, as a reader, want to see her undertake. I hope this is also the type of character I have created in my book.

By Linda Barnes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Big Dig as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Carlotta Carlyle, the six-foot-tall redhead private investigator, thought that working undercover searching out fraud on Boston's Big Dig would be a challenging assignment. After all, the Big Dig, the creation of a central artery highway through downtown Boston, is a USD 14 billion project, the largest urban construction undertaking in modern history. But playing a mild-mannered secretary working out of a construction trailer is not quite the thrill ride she had in mind, so Carlotta starts moonlighting, taking on a missing person case. The mysterious death of a construction worker stirs up a storm of events and soon enough Carlotta…


Book cover of Ceremony

Scott Von Doviak Author Of Charlesgate Confidential

From my list on crime that bring Boston to life.

Why am I passionate about this?

The roots of my debut novel Charlesgate Confidential are in the time I spent in Boston, most notably the three years I lived in the Charlesgate building when it was an Emerson College dormitory. I always wanted to find a way to write about that time, but it wasn’t until I immersed myself in the world of Boston crime—not only the novels of Higgins, Lehane, and company but nonfiction works like Black Mass and movies like The Departed and The Town—that I hit on the way to tell my story. I’ll always be excited for new Boston-based crime fiction, and I’m happy to share these recommendations with you.

Scott's book list on crime that bring Boston to life

Scott Von Doviak Why did Scott love this book?

As great as it was, Eddie Coyle didn’t leave much of a cultural footprint, at least not until the movie adaptation starring Robert Mitchum was rediscovered decades after its initial release. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser is another matter entirely, having spawned nearly 40 novels by Parker, another 10 by Ace Atkins, a popular ‘80s TV series, and a Netflix movie starring Mark Walhberg. Picking just one of the durable shamus’s adventures is a daunting task, but I’ll give the nod to Ceremony for its evocation of the seedy seventies Combat Zone (Boston’s long-gone red light district) and the murky morality of Spenser’s dealings with a teen runaway turned sex worker.

By Robert B. Parker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ceremony as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The house looked right. And the neighborhood was perfect. And everything else was wrong. So Spenser took the parents' money and went after a runaway girl. Unfortunately, April Kyle had already traveled two lifetimes from her suburban home. Now she was caught up in a web of pinps, criminals, and exploiters—the kinf of people who won't listen to anything but money, or a gun. . . . 

Praise for Ceremony

“Sizzling.”—The Pittsburgh Press

“Pick of the crop, this one. Genuinely involving.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer


Book cover of Looking for Rachel Wallace

Gary Earl Ross Author Of Nickel City Blues

From my list on mysteries that make characters of cities.

Why am I passionate about this?

Our home was full of books. My mother routinely passed books to her firstborn, me. While she read widely, she loved mysteries, so I grew up devouring both classics and lesser-known whodunnits. Many of those novels had strong enough descriptions of their cities that I felt like a visitor. But most were set in places like New York and Los Angeles, never my home town, Buffalo, and never with an African-American hero. After my 2013 retirement from an English professorship, I began writing the Nickel City mysteries to add a new hero to the PI pantheon and showcase my birthplace, nicknamed for the buffalo head nickel.

Gary's book list on mysteries that make characters of cities

Gary Earl Ross Why did Gary love this book?

Street names, the Charles River, bridges, the Back Bay, the Public Gardens, actual hotels and restaurants—Robert B. Parker’s forty Spenser novels make Boston so much a character that Parker wrote Spenser’s Boston. The sixth novel in the series, published in 1980, has Spenser searching for a missing lesbian activist who’s been kidnapped by an anti-gay group. Like Buffalo, Boston sometimes gets a lot of snow. Unlike Buffalo, which is not the snowiest city in New York but is depicted as such, Boston is not known as a snow capital. That Spenser must search during a blizzard is a welcome dose of realism.

By Robert B. Parker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Looking for Rachel Wallace as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Crackling dialogue, plenty of action, and expert writing.”—The New York Times

Rachel Wallace is a tough young woman with a lot of enemies. 

Spenser is a tough guy with a macho code of honor, hired to protect a woman who thinks that kind of code is obsolete. Privately, they will never see eye to eye.

But when Rachel vanishes. Spenser is ready to lay his life on the line—to find Rachel Wallace.

“A rare kind of book.”—Chicago Sun-Times


Book cover of Early Autumn

Gayleen Froese Author Of The Girl Whose Luck Ran Out

From my list on hard-boiled comfort reads for a disappointing world.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was nine years old, I joined a book club. The members were me and my dad. He’d throw detective books into my room when he was done with them, and I’d read them. We’d never discuss them. But that’s why hard-boiled detective fiction is comfort food for me and how I know it so well. I’ve been binging on it most of my life and learning everything the shamus-philosophers had to teach me. Now I write my own, the Ben Ames series, for the joy of paying it forward.

Gayleen's book list on hard-boiled comfort reads for a disappointing world

Gayleen Froese Why did Gayleen love this book?

Early Autumn made me cry from two directions. As a tween, reading about Spenser’s rescue of Paul, a shut-down, emotionally neglected boy that Spenser first assesses as “an unlovely little bastard”, I cried in sympathy and relief for Paul.

Over a summer, Spenser taught him skills, built up his strength and gave him the confidence to find his own dreams, before leaving him at the doorway to the life he now knew he wanted. As an adult, I cried with joy for Spenser, who connected with a stranger, taught what he had to teach, and changed a life.

Really helping someone in a lasting way is rarely so easy as it was in this book, but it’s a worthwhile dream and this Cinderella story gets me every time.

By Robert B. Parker,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Early Autumn as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“[Robert B.] Parker's brilliance is in his simple dialogue, and in Spenser.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

A bitter divorce is only the beginning. First the father hires thugs to kidnap his son. Then the mother hires Spenser to get the boy back. But as soon as Spenser senses the lay of the land, he decides to do some kidnapping of his own.

With a contract out on his life, he heads for the Maine woods, determined to give a puny 15 year old a crash course in survival and to beat his dangerous opponents at their own brutal game.


Book cover of A Catskill Eagle

Rob Avery Author Of Close-Hauled

From my list on a hard-nosed detective series.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in California when cameras had flashcubes, skateboards had clay wheels, and kids longed for a lime-green Schwinn Stingray. Sailing, surfing, beach parties, and rock music were staples of my youth. Over time, we lost the Beatles but found the Allman Brothers, Zeppelin, and The Who. Disco had not yet destroyed us. I ditched the skateboard but kept sailing. Later, I became a criminal defense attorney. My profession inspires me to write realistic mystery/thriller novels. My sailing provides the setting. My goal is to give readers a solid, entertaining tale while bringing them to warm waters and island cultures and putting a little sand between their toes.

Rob's book list on a hard-nosed detective series

Rob Avery Why did Rob love this book?

Spenser is a hard-nosed private detective living and working in Boston. When his girlfriend Susan runs off to California with another man, Spenser feels betrayed but understands. She has her freedom. Then his best friend, Hawk, is falsely arrested and jailed in the new man’s town. This sets off a firestorm of murder and violence as Spenser first frees Hawk and then they both attempt to free Susan from an abusive, if consensual, relationship. And then the CIA gets involved. A Catskill Eagle is the twelfth of forty Spenser novels written by Parker.

By Robert B. Parker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Catskill Eagle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Susan's letter came from California: Hand was in jail, and she was on the run. Twenty-four hours later, Hawk is free, because Spenser has sprung him loose—for a brutal cross-country journey back to the East Coast. Now the two men are on a violent ride to find the woman Spenser loves, the man who took her, and the shocking reason so many people had to die. . . . 

Praise for A Catskill Eagle

“Entertaining.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune

“His best mystery novel.”—Time


Book cover of The Hunter
Book cover of Eight Million Ways to Die
Book cover of Hell To Pay

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