Here are 100 books that Wall of Glass fans have personally recommended if you like
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Deserts are inherently mysterious places. This likely explains why so many good mystery novels have been set in them. We spent better than forty years doing field work in the American Southwest, and we have found mystery novels based in this region among the very best. All good mystery novels must have strong plots and memorable characters, but to us an equally important component is setting. Jane is a botanist with expertise in the use of plant evidence in solving murder cases. Carl is a vertebrate zoologist and conservation biologist. Upon retirement we began writing mysteries. Some are set in the desert grasslands of Arizona, and all are inspired by the southwestern authors we have selected as our favorites.
When we first discovered Tony Hillerman’s books, we nearly lost a whole summer’s fieldwork because we couldn’t stop reading them. In our opinion, no fiction author has better captured both the haunting physical beauty and cultural traditions of the Navajo Nation. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the tribal police is more pragmatic than his fellow officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, who bring a more spiritual side to their work. The Blessing Way is the first of this long-running series, which is being carried on by Anne Hillerman. In this first book, the police find a corpse so far out in the desert and so wrapped in mystery as to shake even Leaphorn’s belief that everything has a rational explanation. Hillerman inspired us to try writing mystery novels of our own, although we don’t pretend to have achieved his level of mastery.
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!
“Brilliant…as fascinating as it is original.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, the first novel in his series featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn & Officer Jim Chee who encounter a bizarre case that borders between the supernatural and murder
Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place—a corpse with a mouth full of sand—abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues.…
Deserts are inherently mysterious places. This likely explains why so many good mystery novels have been set in them. We spent better than forty years doing field work in the American Southwest, and we have found mystery novels based in this region among the very best. All good mystery novels must have strong plots and memorable characters, but to us an equally important component is setting. Jane is a botanist with expertise in the use of plant evidence in solving murder cases. Carl is a vertebrate zoologist and conservation biologist. Upon retirement we began writing mysteries. Some are set in the desert grasslands of Arizona, and all are inspired by the southwestern authors we have selected as our favorites.
David Mapstone is a failed PhD academic who comes home to Phoenix, Arizona, where an old friend with the sheriff’s department takes pity and finds him a job solving cold cases. It turns out he’s good at it, but he is less successful in coping with the urban sprawl that has nearly obliterated the best parts of his hometown. In Concrete Desert, the first in Talton’s series, Mapstone reconnects with an old flame when she asks him to solve the mystery of her missing sister. While doing so, he stumbles on an eerie connection with an unsolved mystery from forty years earlier. We especially liked this book and the whole series because of the author’s skillful depiction of the old and the new, and the best and the worst, of a city in the process of gobbling up an American desert.
At loose ends, David Mapstone gets an assignment from a friend in the sheriff's office - go through the old "unsolved" files and clear them out one way or another. David doesn't expect to find any connection to the present or anything personal in any of these ancient cases. But when an old girlfriend turns up at his door asking him to help find her missing sister and the sister is later found murdered. David is atonished to see that her killing so closely parallels a 40-year-old case that it cannot be a coincidence.
Deserts are inherently mysterious places. This likely explains why so many good mystery novels have been set in them. We spent better than forty years doing field work in the American Southwest, and we have found mystery novels based in this region among the very best. All good mystery novels must have strong plots and memorable characters, but to us an equally important component is setting. Jane is a botanist with expertise in the use of plant evidence in solving murder cases. Carl is a vertebrate zoologist and conservation biologist. Upon retirement we began writing mysteries. Some are set in the desert grasslands of Arizona, and all are inspired by the southwestern authors we have selected as our favorites.
Joanna Brady finds herself elected sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, after her husband dies while campaigning for the same job. In this first book of the series, Sheriff Brady must clear her husband’s name of some ugly rumors while simultaneously searching for his killer. Joanna’s life is a complicated one, balancing motherhood and ranching on a small scale, while managing a sheriff’s department not used to having a woman at the helm. Add to the mix an unsympathetic mother-in-law and (later in the series) a new husband, and you have a protagonist constantly on the edge of chaos. We like this series especially for the author’s skill at portraying the way Brady manages her complicated life, while also evoking the environment and history in and around the former mining town of Bisbee.
Her obsessive hunt for a killer threatens to place both Joanna and her nine year old daughter Jenny in serious jeopardy. Because, in the desert, the truth can be more lethal than a rattlesnake's bite.
Deserts are inherently mysterious places. This likely explains why so many good mystery novels have been set in them. We spent better than forty years doing field work in the American Southwest, and we have found mystery novels based in this region among the very best. All good mystery novels must have strong plots and memorable characters, but to us an equally important component is setting. Jane is a botanist with expertise in the use of plant evidence in solving murder cases. Carl is a vertebrate zoologist and conservation biologist. Upon retirement we began writing mysteries. Some are set in the desert grasslands of Arizona, and all are inspired by the southwestern authors we have selected as our favorites.
Bill Gastner is the sort of detective you’d expect to find working the mean streets of an inner city: a rumpled overweight insomniac addicted to coffee and cigarettes. Instead his beat is the Chihuahan Desert of a fictitious county on the border between New and Old Mexico. In Heartshot, Undersheriff Gastner must solve multiple murders related to the illegal drug trade, including the loss of a fellow officer. The killer turns out to be somebody nearly as surprising and dangerous as the place where Gastner finds him. In his first book in the Posadas County series, author Havill skillfully brings to life both the rewards and challenges of life in a harsh yet beautiful place, where the people of two cultures are trying to figure out ways to live with one another.
First book in the Posadas County Mystery Series When a series of crimes disrupts the tranquil community in Posadas County, New Mexico, a group of small-town cops will have to fight for their lives to keep the county safe Posadas County, New Mexico, has very few mean streets and no city-slick cop shop. But it has an earnest, elected County Sheriff and his aging Undersheriff-William C. Gastner. Pushing sixty, widower Bill has no other life than in law enforcement-and doesn't want one, even if he's being nudged gently toward retirement. Then big time trouble strikes. A car full of teens,…
I’m a private eye. No, I don’t carry a gun. Or trail around after cheating spouses. In fact, the job is way more interesting than that, in a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction way. So it’s a pleasure to recommend these books that tell private eye life as it really is. One is written by a private eye, three others are written about us, and one more is a remarkable investigation itself, but they all ring true about the mystery that is private detective work. On days when even I can’t believe my job, I turn to these books for inspiration, information, and reality checks too. I hope you enjoy them as I do.
Fictional lady detectives are sexy and fascinating, we can all agree. But what about real life? That’s the question asked and answered in this non-fiction book by brilliant crime writer Val McDermid, who lavishes her attention and experience over nearly 300 interview-packed pages to explore all the ways in which private investigation is – thank you – a very suitable job for a woman indeed. “Smart, strong and sure of themselves, they walk the mean streets to their own beat,” Val concludes. When I think of my friends who, like me, are real-life women PIs, I have to say Val McDermid has done her detective work – because that sounds exactly right.
""But down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished or afraid."" When Raymond Chandler wrote these words in his classic The Simple Art of Murder, he drew a blueprint for the male private eyes who descend from Philip Marlowe to populate the world of crime fiction. But what if the private eye is a woman? And what if she is not a character in a novel but a real, working investigator testing not only the meanness but the absurdity of life on seamy streets? Who will tell her story?
I’m a retired surgeon and have no expertise in espionage, law enforcement, or the legal system. But I enjoy thriller novels that feature these things, and I follow the adage, “Write what you like to read.” But I do have medical/surgical expertise and have followed another adage: “Write what you know,” so I have inserted medical situations into many of my stories and one of my published books is a medical thriller. What I like about thrillers is the ability to show each side of the conflict. The good guys against the bad guys, neither side knowing what the other is doing. But the reader knows, and this adds to the suspense.
There isn’t a Robert Crais novel I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed, but I especially like the ones featuring PI Elvis Cole and his no-nonsense, stoic buddy Joe Pike. What is especially good about this novel is the character development of the two antagonists. Their personalities, often clashing with each other, make them more than one-dimensional killers, adding spice to the story—something I try to do in my own books.
'Just keeps getting better and better' Evening Standard As addictive as Lee Child and as explosive as Michael Connelly - THE WANTED is the new thriller from Robert Crais, and a NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Seventeen-year-old Tyson is a normal teenaged boy - he's socially awkward, obsessed with video games, and always hungry. But his mother is worried that her sweet, nerdy son has started to change... and she's just found a $40,000 Rolex watch under his bed. Suddenly very frightened that Tyson has gotten involved in something illegal, his mother gets in touch with a private investigator named Elvis…
I'm an actor turned journalist and writer. After a series of roles on low-budget movies and forgettable soap operas, I moved to Latin America to write about travel and life and all the heartbreak and humour it entails. El Flamingo follows the misadventure of a struggling actor who gets mistaken for a rogue assassin in Mexico and is forced to assume the mysterious identity in order to survive. It is a preposterous plot that could never happen in real life, yet the essence of it all was inspired by places I went, people I crossed paths with, and a sense of adventure that, to me, was authentic.
Elvis Cole is the first-person narrator of a classic private eye series set in Los Angeles.
It is fun and unpretentious while being full of sociological truisms. The novels are first and foremost crime thrillers, but the comedic voice and observations make for a somewhat genre-bending experience every single read.
The second blistering Elvis Cole novel from the bestselling author of RACING THE LIGHT
'Brilliant... read this, then read all his others' Mirror
Bradley Warren had lost something very valuable, something that belonged to someone else: a rare thirteenth-century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure.
Everything PI Elvis Cole knew about Japanese culture he'd learned from reading SHOGUN, but he knew a lot of crooks - and what he didn't know, his sidekick Joe Pike did.
Together, Cole and Pike begin their search in L.A.'s Little Tokyo, the nest of the notorious Japanese mafia, the Yakuza - and find themselves caught…
I’m still trying to figure out who I am. I’ve made films, I’ve written fiction, I’ve been in a punk band, and now I’m in law school. I’ve bopped around to different interests my whole life and never quite felt like I fit in anywhere, maybe because I grew up a part Puerto Rican kid in Kentucky. I don’t know. All I know is I’ve been a reader all this time, and I think because I’ve always found my own identity elusive, the mysteries and thrillers I gravitate towards are ones with characters that aren’t so easy to pin down.
Pinky fell into becoming a private investigator, but it’s a perfect fit for her personality.
She’s naturally curious. And skeptical. But now, even though she has an actual assignment she needs to work on, she’s spending her time investigating the guy who moved in next door. But his identity is impossible to pin down.
My favorite part is when Pinky gets caught following her weird neighbor. He introduces himself as Clarence, which is strikingly similar to Pinky’s real name, Clarice. It’s like he’s saying no matter how hard you try, you’ll never find out anything about me, but I know everything about you. I had to keep reading just to try to figure out who this guy was and what he was up to.
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent and The Last Trial returns with a riveting legal thriller in which a reckless private detective is embroiled in a fraught police scandal.
For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation—until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few…
I have written seven novels to date that have at their heart the idea that there is a wider, unseen game afoot that is being played out in realms about which normal humans are unaware. Six of them form the Allie St Clair ‘Black’ series, and the seventh is a stand-alone novel called The Unforgiver. Why do I write about these things? Very probably my teenage reading of Stephen King’s early work, HP Lovecraft’s collection, and my personal connection to Satan. Just kidding. I’ve never read any Lovecraft. To be serious, how can you not gaze into the infinite cosmos above and not wonder if there’s a lot more going on than we comprehend?
John Connolly is simply a terrific writer. In this Detective Charlie Parker novel, the Maine woods are a character in themselves—sinister, overbearing, and almost certainly harbouring—you guessed it—real evil. Connolly’s Charlie Parker is haunted—literally—and dangerous. He’s a complex and darkly charismatic figure that I find compelling. The Wrath of Angels has at its core the battle between Good and Evil, but it is played out by imperfect characters in a very spooky atmosphere. It has all the ingredients of a horror novel, doesn’t it? But John Connolly manages darker themes believably and again, for me, it mixes genres beautifully—and believe me, that’s not easy.
EVIL TAKES MANY FORMS. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR CHARLIE PARKER HUNTS THEM ALL. 'Haunting, scary and addictive' Independent on Sunday
In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of an aeroplane is discovered. There are no bodies. No such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. Hidden in the plane is a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the Devil. Now a battle is about to commence between those who want the list to remain secret and those who believe…
I'm the author of The Lake Pines Mystery Series, as well as a multi-genre-inspired reader and writer. The story is what motivates my interest and captivates my attention. From my early fascination with Nancy Drew that drove me straight into my love of Agatha Christie, I'm passionately drawn to the traditional whodunnit murder mystery genre. I love creating red herrings and revel in the ‘ah-ha’ moments that give the reader pause and enjoyment. As a writer, I wanted to bring stories to life – to entertain and inform. Through murder mysteries I hope to give readers of this genre the satisfaction of a good ending, layered characters, and a good whodunnit.
It was 1887 when the world was introduced to Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. Since then, Sherlock Holmes has been synonymous with solving the unsolvable crime. Uniquely presented, Sherlock Holmes’ adventures take the reader on a mind-bending journey as clues are revealed and entertaining characters are introduced. I recommend this entire collection because they will be stories you read more than once.
Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories contains, in two volumes, all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s world-famous detective.
Volume I includes the novels and stories that introduced the brilliant and unflappable Sherlock Holmes and his partner, Dr. Watson, to the world. A Study in Scarlet is a drama of long-simmering revenge that ranges from the fog-bound streets of London to the pioneer settlements of Utah. The Sign of Four weaves together a stolen treasure from India, poison darts, and double-crossing thieves, while The Hound of the Baskervilles sets the legend of a diabolical…
