What is (are) the best murder crime mystery book(s) ever written?

Any of Ann Rule's books

My favorites are Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch series. Los Angeles is his co-star.

The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie)

Is agatha christie the best writer of the genre? And which books of hers is the best? I would agree if there was a book list of this genre it should include, at least one. of her books, But which one(s)?

[quote]Is agatha christie the best writer of the genre?

There are more sophisticated writers, but NO ONE created better stories.

As to which ones are best, I second R4's vote for "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" for a Poirot story. For Miss Marple, "A Murder is Announced" seems pretty popular here. And, for one with neither detective, "And Then There Were None" is always riveting (even if you already know whodunnit and how).

I love Dorothy Sayers. The Nine Tailors is close to perfect.

I recommend Ruth Rendell aka Barbara Vine, particularly her earlier books.

The mid-century Southern California hard-boiled private eye novels of Ross MacDonald are now considered classic American literature, as are the earlier works of Raymond Chandler ("The Big Sleep," "Farewell, My Lovely," "The Long Goodbye," and more), and Dashiell Hammett ("The Maltese Falcon," "The Continental Op," "The Thin Man," and more). As are the works of James M. Cain, "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Mildred Pierce," and more), which don't feature a recurring private eye, but do feature people, usually Californians, doing crime and doing evil.

James Ellroy is another Southern California hard-boiled crime writer whose works have literary greatness, "L.A. Confidential" being one of his masterpieces, as well as "American Tabloid," "Perfidia," and other crime fiction, plus his nonfiction memoir "My Dark Places," about his personal quest to solve the Black Dahlia-like murder of his own mother.

The works of Elmore Leonard are also up there in the pantheon, but I'm not familiar enough with his oeuvre to know the standouts.

There's also the superb Los Angeles-area hard-boiled detective novels of Walter Mosley. Over the years he's created additional series so he's got Iike three series going at present, each with its own protagonist. They're all good, but the literary classics are those featuring private eye Easy Rawlins. The Rawlins series starts just after WWII in the 1940s, and currently has taken Easy and the black Los Angeles world he frequents up to about the late '60s or so. They are like fine wine.

The New Yorker a couple months back did a long piece on my current favorite, a noir series featuring German private eye/homicide cop Bernie Gunther, which along the way is a tragic history of the Nazi horror and ruination of Europe. The first three in the series can be acquired in one Penguin volume with the umbrella title of "Berlin Noir." He just released the 10th or 11th. Once you read one, you'll have to read them all.

Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine’s “A Dark-Adapted Eye” is brilliant and genuinely disturbing. She has a better grasp of psychology than Christie, and a much darker world view.

R8 beat me to it. I think I prefer the Vine persona--especially chilling. Also, "Innocent Blood," by P.D. James. Philip Kerr does the Bernie Gunther books. Joseph Hansen did a number of L.A.-set mysteries with gay P.I. Dave Brandstetter.

Hey, wait a minute there.

Unveiling Claudia. Seriously freaked me out. Great book.

I still enjoy Sue Grafton's books. Especially V is for Vengeance. Robert Parker was fun too. Some people want more suspense or violence though, something a little grittier.

I've never read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd but it's often cited as one of her best. A couple of Christie books I can recommend are A Pocketful of Rye and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. The latter was made into a great movie with Angela Lansbury ("Miss Marple"), Kim Novak, Elizabeth Taylor, Geraldine Chaplin, Tony Curtis, and Rock Hudson.

A couple of other great Christies: Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders, Crooked House

Ngaio Marsh is an underrated writer in the Christie mold and has the most inventive murder weapons

Nobody tops Dorothy L. Sayers - they're best read in chronological order

In the true crime genre - Fatal Vision about the Green Beret murderer and Helter Skelter about the Manson family are classics.

I don't know about greatest, but I've quite enjoyed some of Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone mysteries, which nicely evoke SF.

Blood and Money, by Thomas Thompson. About a murder of a socialite in Texas, and her husban$ Who is suspected but never proved. Very creepy. There was a TV movie with Farrah Fawcett as the heiress, Sam Elliott as her husband, and Andy Griffith as her father,

Of possible interest is work by Michael Nava. His Henry Rios is a gay latino detective in LA. For an interview in 2015, google: Michael Nava, New Yorker.

The martin beck series started the whole scandanavian crime writer phenomenon. henning mankell's wallender series, jussi adler olsson, arnaldur idriasson

Aren't there several gay detectives?

I thought 'The Alienist' and 'The Angel of Darkness', both by Caleb Carr, were excellent.

I think true crime is more interesting than fiction...

P.D. James. Hands down.

[quote]I still enjoy Sue Grafton's books

I like her alphabet crime books, they are a fast read and not too scary to read before bed.

A Cast of Killers by Sidney Kirkpatrick

Any Marple books by Agatha Christie. It’s like climbing into bed with a hot water bottle. The Poirot ones are great too, but he is VERY pompous and can grate.

Any Jim Thompson novel that's been adapted for the screen. THE GRIFTERS, THE KILLER INSIDE ME, A HELL OF A WOMAN, POP. 1280, THE GETAWAY, etc.

It really depends on what you're looking for in detective fiction, but if you like British dark and quirky I would say Ruth Rendell's 1970s/80s mysteries (the Inspector Wexfords and non-Wexfords) and all of her Barbara Vine books.

I also love Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series, beginning with Case Histories. I think there are 5 of them now. I hope she writes another soon. Not as dark as Rendell/Vine, but definitely not twee and cozy.

Executioners Song by Mailer. True story, but more of the aftermath of a killing, from the point of view of Gary Gilmore, and what's it's like being on Death Row.

Hear hear, r25.

The Prince of Beverly Hills. Fun read.

I can't wait until February 27th. I read a review for the new book by Michelle McNamara - I'll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. Sounds like a real true-crime page turner.

The Peculiar Crimes series is great /Christopher Fowler). Genuinely quirky British mysteries with a lot of history thrown in. The series is beginning to fade; so, start with book one.

The Rivers of London series is also good. The first book was a bit rough going plot-wise, but it picked up after that. The series is a bit like a Harry Potter murder mystery in that it combines fantasy and real life. The river of London part is that it involves the river gods, who all act like a big squabbling family. There are also pixies and elves and other elementals. This may sound twee, but the fantasy characters are all defined in a way that makes sense as inhabitants of two worlds. There is also nothing cute about them. The author goes back to the original, pre-Victorian notion of elementals as very complicated creatures. The murder mystery plots are well done and usually involve some bit of UK history. The lead character is black, which caused a bit of a stir in the UK as the publisher went out of the way to avoid showing that. The problem it that the author, Ben Aaronovich, seems more interested in graphic novels nowadays.

If you like Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries TV show, try the Maisie Dobbs series. This is a good example of a series that was fascinating until the author "learned how to write mysteries". The early books all deal with the lingering effects of WWI on the UK. The early books are quite good. Once she hits the 1930s, things start to go down hill.

Thanks for this thread, OP. I’m taking notes!

How about Tana French, has anyone read her? Any recommendations?

the black dahlia.

In cold blood - you need to read this first.

The Alienist

Great thread. Also taking notes.

So many great Rendells. Here are some of my favorite Inspector Wexfords:

Murder Being Once Done

Some Lie and Some Die

No More Dying Then

A Sleeping Life

Shake Hands Forever

The Speaker of Mandarin

An Unkindness of Ravens

Best Stand Alone mysteries:

One Across, Two Down

A Judgment in Stone

Talking to Strange Men

Her best Barbara Vine books:

A Dark-Adapted Eye

A Fatal Inversion

Anna's Book

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

ENJOY!

For a change of pace with some humor, try the Fletch series by Gregory Mcdonald. The books (there are quite a few) are far better than the Chevy Chase movies.

Agree with the posters who mentioned A Dark-Adapted Eye. It's great.

If you want true crime I thoroughly enjoyed Midnight in Peking by Paul French. It's about an English girl who was murdered in 1930s Shanghai.

[quote]Aren't there several gay detectives?

Well, neither Miss Marple nor Hercule Poirot ever got married, did they?

The Jonathan Kellerman Dr. Alex Delaware books, and his best friend is a gay detective in them.

Kellerman started out okay, but lost his way sometime in the '90s. He doesn't even bother to write complete sentences.

I have read most of the Val McDermid books

Stand out one's are 'A Place of Execution' and 'The Mermaids Singing'. They are all pretty compelling though.

Sandra Scopettone has a series with NYC lesbian detective Lauren Laurano. I remember reading at least one and enjoying.

Marcia Muller, Cyanide Wells.

My current favorites are Louise Penny and Tana French.

I liked those, too, R48. I wanted to like the Jane Lawless series but eventually gave up.

I also love Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, Ruth Rendell, and Tana French. My favorite Tana French book, by far, is The Likeness. The premise is preposterous, but she pulls it off, and her prose style is beautiful.

Some good novelists who haven’t been mentioned yet are Donna Leon (her mysteries are all set in Venice), and Andrea Camilieri (his are all set in Sicily). I read some of John Burdett’s mysteries set in Bangkok, but tired of them eventually.

My current favorite is Denise Mina. Her first books, the Garnet Hill trilogy, were excellent. I also enjoyed her books about, Paddy Mehan, a journalist in Glasgow, who solves some crimes in the 80s and 90s, but I haven’t enjoyed her recent police procedurals as much. Her latest book, The Long Drop, is her best - absolutely brilliant. It’s based on an actual series of crimes and a trial in the 1950s, but much of the book is fictionalized. A man’s wife and children were murdered. The police have a suspect, but can’t get enough evidence on him, so the husband takes the suspect on a pub crawl through Glasgow, trying to get him to say something incriminating. The pub crawl actually happened! Scenes from the trial alternate with a fictionalized version of the pub crawl.

You might start at the beginning with the Rivals of Sherlock Homes series, edited by Hugh Greene, though other publishers are using the same title for their anthologies. I've read a lot of all the different types; S.S. Van Dine, R. Austin Freeman, the Black Mask writers like Paul Cain, Raoul Whitfield, and the 1940's screwball mysteries of Craig Rice, Stuart Palmer, Fredric Brown, etc., up to P.D. James, M.C. Beaton, Margery Allingham, Michael Innes, Charles Willeford, Ross Macdonald, There is no best among them, I've enjoyed most.

Does James M. Cain fit? The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce. The best in noir mystery.

How about Patricia Highsmith? Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley.

Daphne de Maurier for British Gothic.

There's a wonderful American mystery writer Carolyn Keene (transliterated as Caroline Quine in France) you should check out.

Some of my favorites are:

The Secret of Mirror Bay (Alice et la Dame au lac)

The Spider Sapphire Mystery (Alice en safari)

The Sign of the Twisted Candles (Alice et le Chandelier)

The Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk (Alice et la Malle mystérieuse)

The Clue of the Tapping Heels (Alice et les Chats persans)

This is a terrific thread! I hope we can keep this going.

Bloodstains on the Caftan, by D. Lounger

Agatha Christie. Ten little niggers. Riveting

Ross McDonald -- The Chill.

Robert Crais -- LA Requiem.

Ruth Rendall -- A Judgment in Stone (more of a dark psychological novel than a real mystery, but a great book.)

Raymond Chandler -- The Big Sleep

Patricia Highsmith -- Strangers on a Train (even if you've seen the movie; the novel is much darker with different plot twists)

Michael Connolly -- The Poet

I liked the Ian Rankin Revus books for a quick read.

And slightly off topic, r48, Sandra Scoppetine had a couple of really good YA books that I loved when I was younger.

I'm thinking about starting the American Tabloid series by Ellroy, and I also just started Babylon Berlin (reading it before I watch the show).

Great thread, btw.

- r60

I said "ten little NIGGERS ', SJWs... Are you asleep ?

That's the original title in the UK. It was called Ten Little Indians in the US. However when Hollywood filmed it, the title was changed to And Then There Were None to avoid offending Indians.

However, when the film was originally released in the UK, the distributors changed the title back to Ten Little Niggers, despite the fact that the figurines depicted in the movie were clearly Indians.

I want to like James Ellroy, but his manic, shock-every-page style gets on my nerves.

For smoother, more vintage noir prose, you might try a classic from the 1940s, Cornell Woolrich. He's was a true DL type -- an alcoholic gay man who lived most of his life with his mother. His work has often been filmed ("Rear Window," "The Bride Wore Black," etc.) His best novel is I Married A Dead Man, from 1948: a desperate, unmarried pregnant girl passes herself as the widow of a wealthy man, and lives to regret it.

I can also second the recommendation of The Chill by Ross McDonald; it has a memorable decades-of-deciet plot, and you have to wait until the very last line to find out whodunit.

One that I love is Erik Larson's Devil in the White City. A sort of Jack the Ripper story that takes place during the Columbia Exposition of Chicago. Lots and lots of historical detail, similar to What Caleb Carr does with NYC.

R64, Dead Man was made into a good Stanwyck film "No Man of Her Own" (1950) and has the bonus of a brief appearance by blond god Richard Denning. Remade in France about 25 years ago.

Steven Saylor has written a good series set in ancient Rome, with an ongoing sleuth.

Op here. It will continue as long as there are posts. It is in all of your DLers' hands now.

Wow, Great book selections. Looks like we will all share more. Repeats and new insights are fine, actually encouraged. I think I am going to read Death on The Nile by Agatha Christie first, if anyone wants to read along with me?

I love Harry Bosch...love him.

Re: Ancient Rome

I like the series featuring Medicus (doctor) Gaius Ruso set largely in Britain, though there were books in Gaul and Rome.

I'm in the midst of a binge reading of the Marcus Didius Falco series. He's a bit hard boiled for me; the last book I read seemed to have rather a lot of gratuitous violence, although I still liked it. Author alternated the books between set in Rome, and elsewhere in the Empire.

I have watched some of the episodes of Beck, but more for the hot actor playing the detective then for the mysteries themselves. Yeah, I can be shallow, too.

Walter Mostly has written some great books...I loved Woman In A Blue Dress.

By the way, the Alienist is really good but I read it more than a decade ago.

I loved The Hippos were Boiled in Their Tanks. About the David Karmerrer murder...murdered by Lucian Carr. The Alienist written by his son.

We're slipping. Nobody's mentioned Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil yet. It really is entertaining. Don't bother with the terrible movie though.

Louise Penny, bar none. She's fabulous. Start with her first book, Still Life, and read them in order. She's Canadian and the books take place in a small town outside Montreal. They feature a gay couple and really wonderful quirky characters. The books get better every year.

R73 again. I didn't mean that the gay couple are the most important characters. A detective is the main character, they are a prominent part of a cast of characters that also includes a crazy poet and a couple of artists. The gay couple own a bistro and B&B. A lot of action takes place in the bistro while characters enjoy delicious food and coffee.

R35- I think the Peculiar Crimes books are getting a bit stale, the detectives have been in their 80’s for about 20 years now. The amount of detail on London history is what keeps me reading them , I never would have thought a murder mystery book about the history of the London Underground could be so interesting!

I absolutely love Canadian author Gail Bowen Joanne Kilbourne series. Set in Saskatchewan and a combination of psychological, modern cosy, good mystery. I also love Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series, historical mystery , Germany WWII, as well as David Downing's World War II 's Station mysteries.

If you want a Canadian series, the one featuring gay P. I. Russell Quant in Saskatchewan is probably better.

I love Kathy Reich and Nevada Barr books. Nevada Barr's books take place in national parks and are quite thrilling.

I have always been more of a true crime fan, so have read all the Ann Rule books. Plus, of course Helter Skelter, but also highly recommend Vince Bugliosi’s first book, Til Death Do Us Part - true story of a pair of lovers who murdered each other’s spouses in 1960’s LA that Bugliosi prosecuted before Manson.

Someone upthread mentioned Fatal Vision, also very good. Joseph Wambaugh, wrote some terrific true crime books - The Onion Field and a personal favorite of mine, “Echoes in the Darkness” about a Philadelphia Main Line murder case.

Also mentioned above The Devil in the White City - great book!

For fiction, I used to be a fan of the John Sanford “Prey” series but got kind of tired of it. Also originally liked Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series but again, tired of it after a while.

You can’t go wrong with the fiction greats - Christie, Ruth Rendell, Conan Doyle

Read Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie.

Join our GREAT NOVELS in the many Genres book club, hosted by Quote4. Right now, we are in the murder mystery genre.

JOIN US!

READ!

[quote]I want to like James Ellroy, but his manic, shock-every-page style gets on my nerves.

Same here. I love a good mystery, and I love a good LA novel even more, but I find him unreadable.

Joan Hess's Maggody series are great fun

I love Joan Hess, both her Magoody and Claire Malloy series are wonderful. Cynical and funny.

The Christie Estate has permanently changed the title to “And Then There Were None,” which is a better title anyway.

Did no one catch that r55 was listing Nancy Drew books?

Cornell Woolric’s “I Married a Dead Man” also was the basis for the Ricki Lake film “Mrs. Winterbourne,” which was essentially a comedy.

R85, I did but you you beat me to it. I grew up reading my mother's original editions of the Nancy Drew series.

Carolyn Keene was the pen name of a series of ghostwriters who were hired to write the series.

Is the writer Anne Perry good? I've never been able to bear to pick up any of her books and put money in her pocket....she's the real life Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet) in [italic]Heavenly Creatures[/italic] (1994)

The mystery author, D. Lounger, has a new one out: D is for Deplorable. Can't wait to read it!

D is for Dick is a good book. So is C is for Cock.

Yes R85, gave me a chuckle.

Another vote here for Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. Couldn't put it down! Just about to start reading The Word is Murder, by the same author.

I stopped reading that series after [italic]E is for Enforced Enema.

r92, did it hit too close to home?

A is for Ass, B is for Balls, E is for Erection, F is for Figleaf, H is for Presenting Hole

R93 Let's just say a lot of successfully repressed memories came back. Couldn't finish it!

(Though I thought the poisoned nozzle was a smart touch...)

What was your first clue, R85?

Tana French is good but her books are largely overwritten and over long, a third of it could /should be removed. That said, I continue to read her.

You cant go wrong with Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell and PD James (except for their later period where they clearly lost some of their Bite. As a fan of the golden age of british fiction, last year i discouvered Gladys Mitchell. She's an acquired taste and there are a lot of misses in her long list, but they are generally fun (and usually sinister).

[quote]Tana French is good but her books are largely overwritten and over long, a third of it could /should be removed. That said, I continue to read her.

I gave up. She isn't that interesting to me.

Just avoid P. D. James -- the worst. Pretentious, wordy, plotless books that meander forever. And, very homophobic. James was proud of her homophobia and when she got into government, she was very vocal about being anti-gay marriage.

Ruth Rendell is only a decade younger but much easier to read and much more in touch with the times. And, she knows how to plot.

Has anyone read Catherine Aird's mysteries?

I read and enjoyed a few way back in the 1970s and see on Amazon they've been reissued in new paperbacks. Some titles include: The Stately Home Murder, Slight Mourning and His Burial, Too. Apparently she's still with us at 87.

Cozy but not twee.

[quote]What is (are) the best murder crime mystery book(s) ever written?

The most holy bible.

Some of my absolute favorite old mysteries were the original Inspector Morse books by Colin Dexter set in Oxford, the basis for the long-running series. Last Bus to Woodstock, The Riddle of the Third Mile, The Secret of Annexe 3, Service of All the Dead, Last Seen Wearing, all great titles.

Very complex plotting that can get a little convoluted, but wonderful reads. I'm not sure if they're easy to find now except maybe used editions on Amazon.

This is a good Nancy Drew mystery

I half agree with some of your comments on PD James, r99, but she still wrote some great ones. Shroud for a Nightingale, fo instance, is very creepy, and even has some lesbians on it. There are other gay characters in her novels, whatever her political view was on gay marriage (at the time). Agreed that she was pretentious.

The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith

The Lord Peter Wimsey books from Dorothy Sayers

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

Endless Night by Agatha Christie. Her best novel, in my opinion

The bible is a pretty good murder mystery

There's more to them beside just a mystery/crime to be solved, but anything by PD James is worth reading.

I recommend James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series, Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder series, and John Conolly's Charlie Parker books (these are very dark).

R1 Anne Rule RULES in this genre...she has written some of the best or the best true crime stories

R103 That's the one that started it all. In France it's called Alice détective.

You see her name is Alice Roy in France. Drew would look odd to a French native, they wouldn't instinctively know how to pronounce it. According to Wikipedia.fr it looks ugly in French and sounds worse as it's pronounced quite like "trou" or hole. Nancy is the name of a large city. So imagine if you had a series of books about a French girl whose name sounded like Seattle Hole.

Any fans of the Dalziel & Pacoe mystery series written by Reginald Hill? I used to read them all and always looked forward to a new one each year. So this thread caused me to look Hill up to see if I'd missed any recent additions only to discover he died in 2012.

They're very quirky whodunnits, lots of English humor, a homely but darling gay cop who assists the 2 lead Inspectors. I'd recommend them if you're looking for something different. My favorite titles were A Killing Kindness, Bones and Silence and Deadheads.

For a gay detective, the Dave Brandstetter series. California is the playground.

*Rebus

The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. The murder mystery is that of the Princes in the Tower, and did Richard III really murder them, as investigated by a bored, bedridden English police detective. One of the greatest crime novels ever written.

Another vote for Ann Rule; and

In the Woods - Tana French

Apple Tree Yard - Louise Doughty

The Widow - Fiona Barton

The early works of: Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Tess Gerritsen. After the 5th, 6th book, they get into a rut, the stories are no longer as clever or compelling.

Donna Leon - Crime, Venetian style

This is another really good modern look into an old unsolved case. [italic]Death at the Priory: Sex, Love, and Murder in Victorian England[/italic] by James Ruddick (2002)

It's short-ish...but very interesting.

[quote]Filled with love, greed, intrigue, violence, and a wealth of suspects, a riveting true account details the unsolved murder of successful attorney Charles Bravo, a cruel man who tormented his wife Florence, in a mystery that paints an intriguing portrait of Victorian culture and one woman's fight to exist in this repressive society.

Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, Kathy Reichs all good procedural crime. Also JK Rowling’s Cormoran Strike novels.

R70 I think you mean "Devil in a Blue Dress" by Walter Mosely.

R118 Perhaps the only good movie Jennifer Beals ever made.

I got to go out and get a copy of death on the nile, this week end. we'll be joining in on this book club. Anyone else?

Cool DL thread.

I'm reading The Dry by Jane Harper now, about 100 pages in. Engrossing, I guess, but I wish it had a little more punch.

I'll keep reading though as it's gotten good reviews everywhere.

[quote]I love Dorothy Sayers. The Nine Tailors is close to perfect.

This.

Surprised no one has yet mentioned French writer Georges Simenon, who's usually in most critics' top ten lists. I've not read him, anyone care to recommend a title?

r123 Pietr the Latvian is the first Maigret novel, so I've seen that title recommended more often than the hundred-plus others.

Harlan Coben is wonderful, started w/ "Tell NO One"; Martha Grimes writes the Inspector Jury series is special.

Absolutely any Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was marvelous.

More votes for Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben (standalones more than the Mickey Bolitar series), and J.A. Jance (J.P. Beaumont series).

Has anyone mentioned Simon Brett?

Simon Brett writes the out of work actor character, Charles something, right? They are well written but I find the character very sad.

I used to just read British police procedurals by PD James, R Rendall, Reginald Hill but at a certain point I flipped and now I only want psychological/suspense thrillers by Barbara Vine. Each one is different and they are slow to start because you can't figure out what is going on, just that there's *something* off but they build and build and the story gets so tense, you can't put it down.

Along the lines of Tana French, Minette Walters (or Waters).

Peter Dickinson writes in different genres. He has a few mysteries featuring an active/ retired policeman Henry Pibble plus another few with no regular characters. Dickinson is a very elegant writer and I've loved everything he's written.

Josephine Tey wrote a series of classic-era gentleman-police detective mysteries that are available on Gutenberg (Australia, if not the US one). Very British but not as wordy as Sayers. She also wrote a few non-detective ones, the most famous is probably The Franchise Affair.

R64, I Married a Dead Man was also made into a French movie back in the 80s. The English title is I Married a Shadow starring a young Nathalie Baye. Will make you want to pack a bag and move to France.

[bold]Re: Sue Grafton[/bold], I am reading the last book she wrote before she died, Y is for (something). Sad to report it is Not Good. In fact, I don't think it is entirely her own work. She has always been a spare writer, she just gets right down to the plot without a lot of excess verbiage. This one reads very different. Half of it is flashbacks so we hear other character's thoughts. That's a first I'm pretty sure. Every so often there's a Kinsey quirk inserted, a peanut butter and pickle sandwich here, a typewritten invoice there but there's endless elaboration about Rosie's awful Hungarian meals. Some scenes go on and on. There's barely any conversation with Henry. None of the characters involved in the mystery are interesting, likeable OR realistic. So far, I 'm only a quarter of the way through it but like I said, the tone is waaaay off and I just wondered if Grafton had written an outline and a few chapters before she got too sick to finish so someone else tried to copy her style. I'd be curious if anyone else had that impression.

I love Ruth Rendell and Tana French