My 21 favorite mystery and thriller writers

Over the course of the past three and a half years, I’ve reviewed well over 100 mysteries and thrillers. A great many of these novels were written by well-established authors with long lists of widely read books to their names. In every case of the 21 writers listed below, I’ve read several of their books (some of them before I launched this blog in January 2010). 

If 21 seems a large number of “favorite” writers, consider all the names you won’t find on this list. Those include several — Ross McDonald, Graham Greene, and Eric Ambler, for example — whom I last read years ago. Also excluded are the potboilers and slapdash works by the likes of James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell, Robert Crais, Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Tony Hillerman, Val McDermid, and Robert B. Parker. I read most of these when younger and am happy to leave them behind. 

What follows here is a list of links to my reviews of individual mysteries or thrillers by the 21 prolific authors I most enjoy. The list is in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names.

The Midnight House, by Alex Berenson

Berenson is a former New York Times reporter who writes beautifully researched stories about soldier-spy John Wells, featuring plots centered on contemporary military and foreign policy issues.

The Drop, by Michael Connelly

Most of Connelly’s 30 novels to date center on the life and work of Los Angeles Police Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. 

Now May You Weep, by Deborah Crombie

Crombie, a Texan who spends extended periods in Great Britain, has written 15 English detective novels that read as though she was born and bred in England.

The Trinty Six, by Charles Cumming

A Briton who has written superior six spy novels, Cumming is often mentioned as a spiritual heir to John Le Carre.

Buried Secrets, by Joseph Finder

Finder is the American author of 11 beautifully crafted thrillers. So far, just two of his novels feature Nick Heller in what appears to be the beginning of a series.

Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst

Since 1976, Furst has written 16 historical spy novels, most of them set in Europe between 1933 and 1944. Furst’s work recreates the mood and atmosphere of the Continent in that era like few others.

Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George

An American, George has written 18 complex and well-written novels featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley (plus four other novels).

Long Time Coming, by Robert Goddard

Goddard is an English novelist whose two dozen excellent novels are typically set in rural towns, with the origins of their plots found decades in the past.

The Racketeer, by John Grisham

Most of Grisham’s 26 crime novels are set in the American South and involve lawyers and legal shenanigans. He has also written 7 other books since he began writing full-time in 1989.

John Le Carre

Though I wasn’t impressed with Le Carre’s recent novel, Our Kind of Traitor, I can’t help but include him in this list. I’m now immersed in his latest work, A Delicate Truth, which strikes me as on a par with his earlier, much praised novels. (To be reviewed soon.)

The Man From Beijing, by Henning Mankell

A Swede, Mankell’s 11 Kurt Wallander crime stories are dark, complex, and often politically tinged novels that reflect his experience as a long-time progressive activist. He has also written 25 other books.

The Leopard: A Harry Hole Novel, by Jo Nesbo

Nesbo, a Norwegian, has written 10 complexly plotted mystery novels about the troubled Detective Harry Hole as well as 8 other novels.

Breakdown, by Sara Paretsky

All but two of Paretsky’s 17 novels feature private detective V. I. (Victoria) Warshawski, who tackles Chicago’s corrupt establishment without compunction.

The Cut, by George Pelecanos

Pelecanos, best known for his writing on the HBO series “The Wire,” is the author of 21 novels, most of them gritty detective stories set on the streets of Washington, D.C.

Silken Prey, by John Sandford

Sandford has written 23 crime novels with the word “Prey” in their titles, all featuring Lucas Davenport, an independently wealthy senior investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Sandford has written 13 additional novels, 7 of them featuring Virgil Flowers, a colorful member of Davenport’s team.

Criminal, by Karin Slaughter

Of Slaughter’s 17 books, 14 are haunting crime stories set in Georgia about the lives of a set of interrelated characters in Atlanta and fictional Grant County.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, by Alexander McCall Smith

Smith’s 14 adult novels (so far) about the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Gaborone, Botswana, comprise just one of many series in a list of works that’s almost too numerous to count. The man must turn them all out through automatic writing in his sleep!

Three Stations: An Arkady Renko Novel by Martin Cruz Smith

The 8 fascinating novels in Smith’s Arkady Renko series about the Soviet, later Russian crime investigator are among a total of 27 he’s written under several pseudonyms.

Victory Square, by Olen Steinhauer

Steinhauer, an American who has spent extensive periods in Eastern Europe, is the author of a brilliant five-book series about the members of the murder squad in the capital of a fictional country in that region. More recently, the young author has written three thrillers about an American spy and his fictional agency.

Harbor Nocturne, by Joseph Wambaugh

A former Los Angeles police officer, Wambaugh has written 16 novels and 5 nonfiction accounts about crime and crimefighters since 1971. Nearly all his novels are police procedurals set in L.A., bringing the authentic experience on the streets to life.

Get Real, by Donald E. Westlake

Writing under his own name as well as 16 pseudonyms, Westlake produced a total of 111 novels from 1959 until his death in 2008, nearly all of them set in New York City, two of them published posthumously. My favorites are the many humorous caper tales about the sardonic master criminal, John Dortmunder.

In addition to these 21 writers, I’ve read excellent mysteries and thrillers by 12 other authors whose output is more limited either because they’re young and just beginning their careers, they write primarily in other genres, or, in at least the case of Stieg Larsson, they’re dead. 

Among the younger writers here that show special promise are Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Tom Rob Smith.  

Following are links to my reviews of individual novels by these 12 authors. 

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson

Disciple of the Dog, by R. Scott Bakker

A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

Faithful Place, by Tana French

So Much Pretty, by Cara Hoffman

The Silent Oligarch, by Chris Morgan Jones

Shaman Pass: A Nathan Active Mystery, by Stan Jones

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson

The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville

Primitive by Mark Nykanen

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith

An exceptional tale of Botswana’s #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

A review of The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, by Alexander McCall Smith

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

Many years ago, when I was pretending to be a science fiction writer, I got to know a famous figure in the genre. Though he himself never admitted as much, I was told that he had worked himself through a prestigious college in the 1950s by turning out shelves-full of sci-fi novels at a penny a word. He rented an office near campus and would show up every weekday morning at 9, remove the cover of his typewriter, and begin typing — nonstop, and without hesitation — until precisely noon. At that point, he would recover the typewriter and leave for lunch and his afternoon classes. Now, some four decades later, I’m inclined to believe that story, because he is credited with having published a total of more than 300 books, a fair number of them award-winners.

Alexander McCall Smith must be a little like that sci-fi writer. Not a lot — just a little, just in the ease with which he manages to write. After all, he has published a total of just 72 books: 36 novels, 21 children’s books, 3 short story collections, and 12 academic texts. But, to give the guy a break, during most of his 64 years he was employed full-time as a teacher of medical law at the University of Edinburgh and other universities. In fact, Smith is renowned worldwide as an expert in the field of medical ethics. By comparison, the sci-fi author I alluded to above has worked full-time as a writer ever since graduating from college.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection is the 13th and latest in Smith’s best-known series of novels about the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Gaborone, the capital of the small, land-locked nation of Botswana, bordering South Africa. To my mind, it’s one of the best. As always, the story revolves around the lives of Mma (“Ms.”) Precious Ramotswe, founder and proprietor of the agency, and her consistently exasperating assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi. Grace graduated from the local secretarial school with an unprecedented grade of 97 percent on her final exam — and she never lets anyone, and I mean anyone, walk into the office without learning about it.

Here, for example, is a typical comment by Mma Makutsi on a statement by Mma Potokwane, Mma Ramotswe’s friend, who was despairing of her life at the time:

“Nobody is useless,” she said heatedly, “and you are less useless than nobody else, Mma. Definitely.” This remark was greeted with silence while Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane had tried to work out what it meant. The spirit in which it was made, though, was clear enough, and Mma Potokwane simply thanked her.”

In The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are confronted with a series of surprises: the completely unexpected visit of their idol, Clovis Andersen of Muncie, Indiana, author of The Principles of Private Detection; the shocking dismissal of Mma Ramotswe’s good friend, Mma Potokwane, as matron of the orphan farm; and the arrest of Fanwell, a young man who apprenticed with Mma Ramotswe’s husband (“the finest mechanic in Botswana”), Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and now works for him as a certified mechanic. Each of these story lines moves along at the measured pace of life in the near-desert of Botswana. As always, of course, Mma Ramotswe solves every mystery and rights every wrong, but this time she receives timely help from her hero, Clovis Andersen.

If there’s a single word that sums up the novels in the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, it’s “charming.” These are books full of gentle humor, folk wisdom, and a view of life and the world that is both generous and optimistic. However, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection dwells more on the story’s setting, exploring the land, its history, and its people more in-depth than in previous books in the series. In the background — always in the background, but unmistakably present — are poverty, the AIDS epidemic, and the tragic events that unfold with alarming frequency in Botswana’s neighbors.

If you haven’t read any of the previous 12 books, you might find The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection to be a good place to start.

Lessons in life from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective

A review of The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party: The New No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Novel, by Alexander McCall Smith

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

Join Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, for the weeks that elapse in this charming tale of life in Botswana, and you may emerge with fresh perspective on life. Mma Ramotswe — the prefix is a title akin to “Ms.” — and those who surround her live their lives in a slow and steady way that would be familiar to village-based people everywhere but alien to those of us who populate the world’s fast-paced urban centers.

Mma Ramotswe’s Botswana is a nation displaced from the passage of time as we experience it. Botswana today is one of the world’s fastest-growing nations, an efficiently governed country that has raised its GDP per capital from $70 in 1966, when it gained independence from Britain, to $14,800 in 2010. There is no hint of this dynamism in The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, which harkens back to an age before the Internet, before mobile phones, before American, European, and Indian films — in short, before all the trappings of today’s reality that are inescapable in all but the most resolutely isolated countries in the world today. This is a celebration of the Africa that never was.

In this novel, as in its predecessors in the celebrated No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Mma Ramotswe’s world is circumscribed by a stable cast of characters who play roles in all her various cases: her husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, “the best mechanic in all Botswana,” and his two young apprentices, Charlie and Fanwell; her socially inept sidekick, Grace Makutsi, who never lets anyone forget she achieved “97 per cent” on her final exam at the Botswana Secretarial College; Grace’s nemesis, Violet Sephotho, a glamorous, man-hungry ne’er-do-well; Grace’s fiance, Phuti Radiphuti, the well-to-do owner of a furniture store; and Mma Potokwane, who manages the orphan farm and the lives of anyone else who comes into her orbit.

All these characters play their assigned roles as Mma Ramotswe sets out to solve the latest mystery — the murder of two cows under the dead of night at a remote rural cattle post — all the while she pursues the ghost of a beloved tiny white van, confronts the accusation that Charlie has fathered twins but refuses to acknowledge them, and helps Grace prepare for her wedding. Each of these plotlines is fraught with anxiety and yields up a surprise, but it all comes out just fine in the end, as always.

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party is the 12th in Smith’s series of novels about The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, his best-known work in fiction. However, this is just one among four other series of novels plus a much longer list of children’s books. And his work in fiction pales against his professional career as an expert in forensic law and bioethics and a respected university lecturer in both Scotland and Botswana. In addition to his numerous works of fiction, he has authored or coauthored a dozen nonfiction books on medicine, the law, and other topics.

The Double Comfort Safari Club, by Alexander McCall Smith

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

For any reader looking for respite from the unrelenting violence of the world we live in, The Double Comfort Safari Club is a worthy antidote. The characters in this novel “. . . talked about all sorts of things . . .: about weddings and children and money. About cattle. About jealousy and envy and love. About cakes. About friends and enemies and people they remembered who had gone away, or changed, or even died. About everything, really.”

“About everything,” indeed. The #1 Ladies Detective Agency Series is less a collection of detective stories than a continuing portrait of a worldview unfamiliar to most North Americans. Mma (“Ms.”) Precious Ramotswe, founder and proprietor of the agency, and her sidekick, Grace Makutsi, exemplify an idealized view of the culture of Botswana, an island of peace and stability in a neighborhood that includes South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. In their speech and their internal dialogue, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, as well as virtually every other major character in the series, manifest the kindness and slow-moving rhythms of their remarkable country.

Consider this example of interior dialogue:

“Mma Makutsi was not certain that floating could be called a sport. Was there a Botswana floating team? She thought not. What would such a team do? Would they have to float gently from one point to another, with the winner being the one who arrived first? Surely not.”

This twelfth installment in the magnificent #1 Ladies Detective Agency Series is worthy of its predecessors in every way. Like its forbears, The Double Comfort Safari Club revolves around several intersecting plotlines. An American estate lawyer has asked Mma Ramotswe to track down a nameless guide at a safari camp who has been granted a generous bequest by a former client. Mma Makutsi’s fiancee, Phuti Radiphuti, loses a foot in a tragic accident at his furniture store, precipitating a standoff between Mma Makutsi and his nasty “senior aunt.” Meanwhile, Mma Makutsi’s nemesis, the beautiful but unscrupulous Violet Sephotho, has victimized another unsuspecting man, who has come to Mma Ramotswe for help. And a female friend asks Mma Ramotswe to confirm her suspicion that her husband, a “part-time minister” and radio evangelist, is having an affair. Complications ensue in every one of these unfolding stories — and every one of them is satisfactorily resolved by the redoubtable Mma Ramotswe, that bottomless well of understanding and humankindness.

The author, Alexander McCall Smith, is an extraordinarily prolific writer. In addition to the #1 Ladies Detective Agency Series, he continues to write three other series of fictional tales, plus children’s books and short stories — not to mention the many nonfiction articles and books he has written as a widely recognized authority on bioethics and medical law. McCall Smith is a lawyer who has spent many years teaching at universities in Botswana, Ireland, and Scotland. He was born and raised in the country now known as Zimbabwe.

ASIN: B003AU7ERY

ISBN-10: 0375424504

ISBN-13: 978-0375424502

Around the world with detective fiction

As I followed private investigator Vish Puri and his team through the streets of Jaipur in Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant (review forthcoming), it suddenly occurred to me that a fair amount of what I’ve learned about life and culture in other countries has come from my reading of detective fiction. And, given the depth of research conducted by so many of my favorite crime writers, I suspect this isn’t such a bad way to learn about the world around me.

• Alexander McCall Smith immerses the reader in the laid-back civility of Botswana through the continuing exploits of Mma Precious Ramotswe in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series, providing a fascinating vantage-point on the only former colony in sub-Saharan Africa to have avoided military coups or civil war.
• Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti delves into the corruption and mulish bureaucracy of Venetian society, giving a sense from the inside looking out on the impact of unending waves of tourists who invade his beautiful city.
• In the Inspector Rebus novels of Ian Rankin, set in Edinburgh, we view the workings of politics in Scotland’s capital and the interplay of the criminal underworld with the city’s establishment — noting in the process just how different is Scottish society from English.
• Royal Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the creation of John Burdett, guides us through the rotten underbelly of Bangkok, with its ever-present sex for sale and police officers moonlighting as drug kingpins.
• Racing through the streets of Moscow, Senior Investigator Arkady Renko explores crime-ridden post-Soviet Russia in Martin Cruz Smith’s excellent novels.
• Henning Mankell’s alter ego, small-town police detective Kurt Wallender, probes the dark recesses of Swedish society, exploring the widespread racism, alcoholism, and depression.
• Elizabeth George’s series of novels about Inspector Thomas Lynley provides a window on English society, both in London, where Lynley is based at New Scotland Yard, and in the countryside, where he and his investigative team are called so often to tackle the country’s toughest murder cases.

Every one of these series of detective novels is well worth reading for sheer enjoyment. Yet they all help illuminate the world we live in.