Am I being whooshed? His non-science fiction books are not mysteries.
Are you sure you aren’t confusing him with Ian Rankin?
Whatever you classify those books as… They are not sci-fi. Gothic horror?
Please name a book you enjoyed. I’m a science fiction reader but have never read anything by him. I’d like to try one. Thank you all.
IMO, every book he published as Iain M. Banks is a masterpiece.
Consider Phlebas is the first one I read. Player of Games and Use of Weapons also come to mind. The Algebraist is outstanding too. As I said, every one is great, hard to pick 
“But I don’t want to be buried . . . I don’t want to be cremated, either. I wanna be blown up! [boomfoooosh*] 'There he goes, God love ‘im!’”
– George Carlin
Very sad, I picked up Consider Phlebas in about '88 and was hooked on Banks, I wasn’t so keen on his later stuff, felt the same about his other books, Espadair Street Crow, Road The Bridge were fantastic, later ones seamed a bit of recycling. We have lost a valuable author.
I would recommend Consider Phlebas or The Use of Weapons. The Player of Games is also very good, not my favorite but other rank it very highly.
Count me in as another one raising a glass of single malt.
I’d recommend either “Espedair Street” or “The Crow Road”. “Espedair Street” is, I think, the best depiction of the 1970s rock scene ever written. It follows the fortunes of the fictitious band ‘Frozen Gold’. I’ll say no more, except to say you’re in for a treat.
“The Crow Road” is about a large, sprawling Scottish family, and the varied world views of its different generations. There is the central question of whatever happened to Uncle Rory, but I still wouldn’t class even this one as a mystery.
I knew there was a reason why I thought Iain Banks wrote mysteries. Complicity.
But you know what, since there will be no new Culture books… I think I will try reading Iain Banks’s books.
Surface Detail was the first book of his that I read, and it was only afterwards that I found out it’s considered a difficult introduction to the Culture.
If you like very little exposition and a dense story that takes about 80% of the book to reveal itself, this book is amazing.
It remains my favorite Culture novel by far.
OK, give with the name. How can I NOT read that?
That’s the opening line of ‘The Crow Road’.
Thank you all for the names of different books to read. 
An incredible loss. I hope his last days were peaceful.
I was looking at my bookshelves earlier, and I realised that Banks (both M and not-M) is by some margin the author who I have the most hardbacks by. There’s only one more to come, and that is very sad.
According to the Washington Post’s obit, he was an extra in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
RIP. One of my favourite authors, both with and without the M.
Terr, I wouldn’t really classify the Iain Banks books as mysteries, I wouldn’t really classify them as a group as anything but Iain Banks books. The Wasp Factory is a masterpiece, and it’s also quite short if you find it’s not to your taste. All his books are worth reading, IMHO.
Thank you. Hope the rest of the book lives up to the first line.
He was a student at Stirling University at the time they were filming Holy Grail. The castle in the film is Doune Castle, and that’s only a couple of miles away from the Uni.
I agree, even the comparative duds like Dead Air are worth a go.
I first discovered him when I wandered into a room where he was giving a reading from his novel The Bridge. at the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton.
He was reading the scottish barbarian’s sections from it , sample
“I luv the ded, this old basturt sez to me when I wuz trying to get some innfurmashin out ov him. You fukin old pervirt I sez, gettin a bit fed up by this time enyway, an slit his throate; ah askd you whare the fukin Sleepin Byootie woz, no whit kind of humpin you lyke. No, no he sez splutterin sumthin awfy and gettin blud all over ma new curiearse, no he sez i sed Isle of the Dead” 
Later at the same convention he was briefly arrested for climbing up the balconies outside the hotel when the police had just arrived to investigate a room robbery. They let him go when all the fans explained that this was normal behaviour for an author at an SF con.
Bought The Bridge on the strength of the above and loved his work ever since
BTW the BBC did a pretty good TV adaptation of The Crow Road.