I haven’t read those titles, but I’ve read a half-dozen or so Kerr books, and he’s very good.
I highly recommend Kate Atkinson’s four-book Jackson Brodie series, starting with Case Histories.
John D. MacDonald, if you like 50s style murder mysteries.
Elmore Leonard
I was going to suggest Woods. Great suggestion!
Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply is a deliciously creepy novel about Internet crime, identity theft and family secrets.
Robert Harris’s Fatherland is a gripping police procedural set in a 1964 Berlin in which the Nazis still rule.
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is about a marriage gone badly awry, and the investigation of the disappearance of a young wife from a depressed Missouri town.
All excellent. Enjoy!
Thanks everyone! Some good suggestions here and plenty to keep me occupied for awhile!
Crime fiction is my favorite genre, so here are a few more good ones:
Stuart Macbride (Logan McCrae series)
Val McDermid (Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series)
Ian Rankin (Inspector Rebus series)
John Connolly (Charlie Parker series)
John Lescroart (Ditmas Hardy series)
George Pelecanos (Anything)
Don Winslow (Cartel Series, I haven’t read his other stuff)
Richard Price (Anything)
Not a series, but an excellent read none the less…
Harry McLean’s In Broad Daylight
Read Australian writers. Some of the best are Peter Carey, Tim Winton, Shirley Hazzard. PR 9619.3 on the library shelves.
Also, Michael Ondaatje should be on everypne’s short-list of must read.
Cormac McCarthy should be number One,
Elizabeth George. Seriously. Crime, but hefty. Great reads.
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Get ready to get punched right in the feels.
Excellent book, one of my favorites.
I will also recommend CJ box, as well as Dana Stebenow. But one left out so far is Sue Grafton. Her Kinsey Milhone A to Z crime solvers are lightweight but I’ve enjoyed them. The series begins in the early 1980s and progresses a few months each book. Right now Ms. Grafton is formulating the Y or Z edition. They can be read independently, but if you start from earlier alpha books you get the sequence automatically. Highly recommended for an easy light read.
My mom and my wife both like them very much.
Adam Hall’s Quiller novels are among my favorite thrillers.
Adam Hall is one of several pseudonyms used by Elleston Trevor. (I’ve read one or two non-Hall Trevor thrillers — they seemed OK too.) Several of Trevor’s novels (Quiller and other) have been made into movies, e.g. Flight of the Phoenix.
Thanks! I have some great suggestions. I have started with Stuart Woods Stone Barrington books because my library has most of them available as eBooks. Immediately happy that they are set in NYC, my old home town. I have made a long list from your suggestions!
Have you tried http://www.openingthebook.com/whichbook/Whichbook?
My Wife and I enjoyed -
Paula Hawkins - The Girl On The Train
Angela Masons (She has a few)
J.A Konrath (The Jack Daniels series [the books are all named after cocktails]. Jack is a female detective in Chicago)
In the “literary-ish” category:
Hoeg, Peter (he’s the author of Smilla’s Sense of Snow)
Temple, Peter (acclaimed Austraian crime writer)
Nesbo, Jo (see post #17…what Sir T-Cups said)
In the “a bit lighter, all in good fun category,” which I recommend only because I see you have Janet Evanovich on your list:
Moriarty, Liane (she veers to the chick-lit side of suspense novels, but she is a great comic writer)
Sorry for the double post but after sleeping on your question, I came up with a few more. First, it’s an accidental omission that Stieg Larsson (he of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) isn’t on your list, right? If by some miracle you haven’t read his books already, he fits well into your list.
I’d also recommend Sharyn McCrumb, especially the Elizabeth McPherson series. If you Google her, she’s described as an “Appalachian” writer, which isn’t wrong but which is incomplete. There is a strong strain of mystery/suspense through most of her novels (though she also wrote a couple of comic SF novels, Bimbos of the Death Sun and Zombies of the Gene Pool).
Tim Dorsey. Sorta anti-crime action. The hero is a totally psychotic serial killer who is without a doubt the most charming, affable Florida fanatic in the universe. I’d hang with Serge in a heartbeat. The series is at 17? books now and a new one is imminent. Start with Florida Roadkill and just let the weirdness embrace you.
*“What do they mean ‘serial killers’! said Serge. (person 1), okay. But (person 2) was self-defence and the (person 3)-I mean, that was the World Series! You can call me a murderer, fair is fair, but as soon as you put ‘serial’ in front of it, everyone automatically thinks you’re crazy.” *
― Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill
How about John Le Carre? He’s one of my favorites. Its spy stuff but not James Bondy in any way. Some repeating characters.