My Ten Many, Many Favorite Mysteries.
What can I say? Mysteries have been my preferred reading since discovered #1, below.
- Agatha Christie. We had many of these in paperback when I was growing up.
I started reading them when I was about 12. Have read them all, many more than once.
- Dorothy Sayers. Lord Peter Wimsey was awesome, but Harriet Vane ROCKED! Have read them all multiple times.
- P.D. James. Another classic. Have read them all. Twice.
- Arthur Conan Doyle. Ditto, but more than twice.
- Other authors whose books I used to seek out: Dick Francis (horse racing & murder), Lilian Jackson Braun (cozies; "The Cat Who..." series; Koko and Yum Yum and Qulleran), Donald Westlake (murder/crime mixed with humor; not a series, just a book a year... forever), Elmore Leonard (best writer of dialogue EVAH), Emma Lathen (murder mysteries about banking and finance -- how could I not read them all?), Sue Grafton (A is for [etc.]; the R book was so boring I gave up on her), J.A. Jance, but not any more. I have Moved On.
- Patricia Cornwell. She deserves an entry all to herself. Her first five or ten books were excellent, but eventually those morose and self-destructive characters got boring. And depressing.
What I read now:
- John Sandford. Lucas Davenport Prey series is my hands-down favorite of all time. Also the Virgil Flowers ("That damn Flowers.") series and the Kidd series; excellent. Then Sandford wrote an espionage novel (don't remember the name). It was so awful I couldn't believe it was the same guy writing. He needs to stick to crime. But a new Prey or Flowers or Kidd book is always cause for rejoicing.
- Jeffrey Deaver. The author who can pack the most plot twists into the last fifty pages of a book.
- Tana French. Go read one of her books and you will be hooked.
- Kate Atkinson. Ditto.
- Steig Larsson. Of course.
- Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell. Books written under the first pseudonym = excellent. Books written under the second = excellent but so unnerving I can only read one every five years or so.
- P.J. Tracy. Techie mysteries set in Minneapolis.
- Carl Hiaasen. Humor, satire, and murder in south Florida. There is a lot to satirize in that locale, and he does it masterfully.
- Jonathan Kellerman and Fay Kellerman. I have read all the Alex Delaware books, but I like her Peter Decker/Rina Lazurus series better.
- Susan Wittig Albert. Herb-themed cozies set in the Texas Hill County.
- Others where I read one book and liked it enough to seek out others by the same author: Markus Sakey, Chelsea Cain, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Dennis Lehane, Tess Gerritsen, Harlen Coben, Alex Kava, Nelson DeMille, Greg Iles, Terri Persons (set in MN).
- Others I read, but this is the B-list: good enough to invest the time to read but not stunning. William Kent Kruger (all set in northern MN), Janet Evanovich (Ranger or Morelli -- you choose), Lee Child (Jack Reacher is every man's fantasy alter ego, imnsho).
- Others I prefer to consume in audiobook format: Michael Connelly, Stephen Cannell, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.
I could go on (and on and on) but I won't. ::collective sigh of relief::
