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Showing posts with label Top Murder Mystery Novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Top Murder Mystery Novels. Show all posts

Top Dark Murder Mystery Novels, List of Recommended Mysteries


Top Murder Mystery Novels

List of Recommended Series and Dark Mysteries

by Patti Wood

 

Kate Atkinson -If you have not read her work, start with behind the Scenes at the Museum and go from there. Her novels are lovely, complex reads. The detective novels are the Jackson Brodie novels. In When Will there be Good News -Atkinson writes about truly horrific matters, often involving violence against women. She brings such remarkable tonal range to her material—four revolving narrators alternate between wit and somber reflection.  Human Croquet (1997).  There is one passage where a character who was adopted as a baby by an older couple is discussed; that says they were an old couple who only knew about gin and canasta, so they taught him both. Oh my gosh, I love it. She describes the character's little quirks of body language so very well. Other writers have adapted the four Jackson Brodie novels for the BBC under the series titled Case Histories, featuring Jason Isaacs as Brodie. I have read everything she has ever written. I love her work.

Defiantly one of the best murder mystery series in modern fiction.

 

Elizabeth George – Her Inspector Linley Mysteries are so well written. Linley's partner Barbra Havers is one of the most interesting, vulnerable, and authentic mystery characters I have ever had the pleasure of getting to know in fiction. If you read all her novels, you will get the painful delight of seeing how she handles a moral dilemma in a case involving her neighbor and the neighbor's daughter. I loved traveling the arch of her character. She is one of those fictional characters that feel like a family member, a troubled family member, but a family.

 

Henning Mankell - I loved all his dark, disturbing, and prose-filled novels. Wallender has an interesting relationship with his father and his daughter that is fascinating to follow throughout the series. The best of the books is told from his daughter's perspective. There are 13 books in the Wallander series, and he also has other excellent novels. Unfortunately, the BBC version of the stories was dark as well.

 

Tana French - The best of her novels is "The Secret Place" A year after the brutal murder of a young man at a posh school for girls, the case remains unsolved. Then 16-year-old Holly Mackey approaches Detective Stephen Moran with a tantalizing clue. French brilliantly and plausibly channels the craziness of youth and shared bonds of friends. Her other books are ok, but this one was special.

 

Peter Hoeg- I have only read this Danish author's work, "Smilla's Sense of Snow" The main character is an expert on ice/snow, and she helps solve a murder case with her expertise in a way that speaks to the quirkiness of my body language expertise. Smilla is 37, unmarried, and, like Isaiah, part of Denmark's small Eskimo/Greenlander community. She is also a minor Danish authority on the properties and classification of ice. Smilla is never less than believable in her contradictions--caustic, caring, thoughtful, impulsive, determined, and above all, rebellious. The best translation of a book I have ever read, the translator Nunnally won an award for best translation.

 

Dennis McFarland - A Face at the Window, Wow!  What a book. It's a deep, disturbing ghost story, a page-turner, and a sophisticated bit of literature. I loved how it got me inside the head of an intelligent and troubled man. In that respect, it reminded me of another good read from years ago, Presumed Innocent. FYI another book that was better than the movie. A quote for A Face at the Window.

 "One Monday morning about a year and a half ago, in late autumn, I woke with a vague awareness of a long dullish instrument of some kind, maybe the butt-end of a medieval halberd, being alternately inserted and withdrawn at the small of my back." The best modern ghost story I have ever read. Read this and then read Frankenstein, the best horror book of all time, written by a 17-year-old girl.

 

Steig Larson –"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." I read the other Larson novels and found them too disturbing, and for a gal that's read well over 1,000 murder mysteries, that says a lot. 

 

Paula Hawkins – I loved The Girl on the Train. But not because it was an exceptionally well-written novel. I found the journey of the Girl and the story so addictive sad, and disturbing. It's one of those books like "Her Husband's Secret." I wanted my friends and family to read it so I could talk to them about what this character did and what they thought about the effect of her choices.

 

Michael Chabon- I love his work. He is such an incredible writer. "The Yiddish Policemen Union" draws on the obscure historical fact that FDR proposed Alaska become the postwar Jewish homeland. Chabon constructs a nightmarish world in frigid Sitka, where black humor is a kind of life-supporting antifreeze and where a browbeaten detective, Meyer Landsman, must stave off Armageddon. The novel combines satire, homage, metaphor, and genuine suspense in delectable prose seasoned with all manner of Yiddish wordplay.

 

Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights, go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Also, check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.