I am amazed that no one has mentioned T. Jefferson Parker, a writer who gets better and better. I may be a bit prejudiced as his stories are set here in the Los Angeles area. I am currfently reading **L A Outlaws **and so far it equals or surpasses any of his previous works.
I’m halfway through Cornwell’s “The Last Remains”.
Do the FBI really use psychics?!
I greatly enjoyed the **Shardlake **series of books by C.J. Sansom. They are set in Tudor England, against the backdrop of the reformation. The main character is a lawyer. In order, the books are Dissolution, Dark Fire, **Sovereign **and Revelation.
May I recommend any of the 87th Precinct novels by ED MCBAIN
:smack: That’d be “All That Remains”
You managed my three favourites in one line! Love Minette Walters ( mentioned earlier) as well. Really good story lines, well written, without endless violence and gore.
Check out** Paul Lindsay**, whose regrettably small output is mostly about the FBI. I read crime novels quite often and Lindsay is my favorite.
The novels are:
Witness to the Truth (1992)
Code Name–Gentkill (1995)
Freedom to Kill (1997)
Traps (2002)
The Big Scam (2005)
and a non-FBI novel, The Fuhrer’s Reserve (2000)
I second this recommendation. I have the audiobook version of this one and I really enjoyed it.
I’m also a fan of Jonathan Kellerman’s novels. I don’t think it matters which one in the series you start with, they usually don’t mention previous cases.
I also have to give mention to James Ellroy. If you like hard-boiled noir crime stories with dark violent characters, multi-layered stories & concise staccato dialogue, give him a try. I recommend his “LA Quartet” series: LA Confidential, The Big Nowhere, **White Jazz **& The Black Dahlia.
One of my favorite from the other side of the crime equation is Hit Man by Lawrence Block - an oddly sympathetic series of stories about an ordinary average guy who happens to be a killer for hire. Very compelling storytelling.
Another vote for Ed McBains 87th precinct stories which are American police procedural and most definitely Colin Dexters Inspector Morse series set in Oxford(The real one not Oxford Texas or whatever) .
Both series IME make gripping reading.
So many!
Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series is incredibly well plotted and believable. Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch series is very good for the first 10 or do instalments. If you can cope with the density of fact over poetry James Ellroy is still in a league of his own. wontgetcaught.com is a serialisation on the net Im enjoying but you cant beat Sherlock Holmes after all these years.
I’ll second that!
I’ll also strongly recommend the Meg Langslow series, by Donna Andrews - good stories, and I like Andrews’s sense of humour.
But I didn’t see Ross McDonald’s Lew Archer books noted yet. If you knew, and loved, the TV series Harry O with David Janssen, you’d like these.
Robert Crais, Jeff Parker, and the Dave Robicheaux novels would round out my top of the list.
Every few years I re-read John D. Mac Donald’s Travis McGee books.
When I first read the OP I thought it said “The Walking Dead,” and thought to myself “Well, that’s not really a police procedural like L&O, but it IS about zombies, so maybe it’s appropriate after all.”
It’s a zombie thread, but thought I’d mention Burke’s father, James Lee Burke, who wrote some very good novels (with the exception of the most recent) with a character named Dave Robicheaux. They mostly take place in Louisiana. Robicheaux’s daughter in the books is named Alafair, by the way.
+1 for Ed McBain (My favorite is The Heckler.)
And if you’re after something funny, try Tim Dorsey’s novels about Serge Storms. My favorite’s Atomic Lobster.
Somewhere I saw a claim that Hammett invented the genre, and Chandler perfected it. No matter; read them both.
When you’re done there, read Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder series. Start with The Sins of the Fathers, and read them in order.
I still think about this book after having read it nearly 6 years ago. I could not remember how to spell the authors’ names but did remember the title, so I cut this blurb from Wikipedia:
And the Sea Will Tell (ISBN 0-393-02919-0) is a true crime book by Vincent Bugliosi and Bruce B. Henderson. The nonfiction book, a New York Times #1 hardcover bestseller and still in print as a trade paperback, recounts a double murder on Palmyra Atoll. . .
I didn’t post more since it might be a spoiler to list more of what Wikipedia lays out in the first paragraph.
Many great suggestions. Of the series I have read I would suggest reading Ed McBain, James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly in order if you can. Although they are all terrific standalone books each series covers many years of career and personal trajectories for the characters.
Ed McGinnis has a few. I read THE BLUE ROUTE which I liked and now I’m on his new one NIGHT TRAIN EXPRESS which is really good. Just look him up on Amazon