Are there any good ones? I know there are many ‘Young Indy’ books and novelisations by Rob MacGregor. Have not been that impressed by them.
Are there books by other authors that are action/adventure and as good as an Indiana Jones movie ( as good as Raiders or Last Crusade anyway)?
I’ve found that James Rollins novels have a sort of Indiana-y Jones-y feeling to them.
Probably why he was chosen to write the novelization of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Not that I envy him that job. I’d have felt dirty…
If you want the non-stop over-the-top action, try Matthew Reilly.
My daughter got me a book called Adventure! Thrilling Tales of Discovery, edited by John Richard Stephens. As you can tell from the cover, its trying to be Indiana Jones-esque
http://www.amazon.com/Adventure-John-Richard-Stephens/dp/B002048SDK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242420195&sr=1-2
There are some cute bits in there I’d never come across, and two stories by Ridyard Kipling. So get a copy of this book (or Stephens’ other collections) and follow up on any you like.
Roy Chapman Andrews is thought by many to be a model for Indy. He wrote several of his own books about exploring the Gobi and the like (He lead the expedition that discovered protoceratops skeletons and the first dinosaur eggs, back in the 1920s, and he was later director of the American Museum of Natural History). I read two books of his when I was a kid. They were written for kids, but I think he wrote for adults as well.
Of course, I have claimed (in a now-gone issue of Teemings) that Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge stories were the real inspiration for Indiana Jones. You could do a lot worse than going to the comic book store and getting reprints of Barks’ old Uncle Scrooge adventures. Or check out Don Rosa’s more recent The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck and its companion volume.
For that matter, there have been some pretty decent Indiana Jones comics.
more votes for reilly and rollins. don’t forget cussler.
I recommend the Doc Savage series, written under the name Kenneth Robeson.
Trust me–Indy & Doc probably were in the same fraternity in college.
Indiana Jones is based on two people, really. One is the fictional character of Alan Quatermain, who was the hero of some H. Ryder Haggardnovels such as King Solomon’s Mines. The prose is a little old, but the stories are ripping good yarns. The second, and more likely model was Percy Fawcett, British archeologist and explorer whose real-life exploits in the Amazon are nothing short of amazing. Read The Lost City of Z, by David Grann.
I hadn’t thought of that. Submarines, airships, '30s airplanes, and a really tough guy.
I second your recommendation.
Beware of the alligator suit, though. 
And alas, there is a tinge of period racism.
I’d vote for Rollins and Reilly as well… or maybe Paul Christopher, especially Rembrandt’s Ghost (although it’s not the first adventure for the hero and heroine).
Napoleon’s Pyramids & The Rosetta Code by William Dietrich are good too; sort of Indy/Flashman adventures during Napoloen’s Egyptian campaign in the late 1790s
Sort of kind of Charles Williams:
Religious objects are found and are fought over.