shesus

My favorite books are mysteries. However, decent mysteries are difficult to find.

I enjoy Agatha Christie, but I can only take so much of the old lady. I also enjoy Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury. I also am a fan of short stories because I can pick it up and read a story while commuting to work. I used to read Mary Higgins Clark, but they started becoming too predicable. They are summer reads, which I'm not in the mood for right now. Also, I'm not into the soft core porn mysteries. I have Anais Nin for my erotica fix.

Ideally, I would like to find some books that are reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock Presents or old radio shows like the Whistler, Nero Wolf, and Suspense.

I'm a bit picky I suppose.

Anyway, has anyone read a good mystery lately?

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ColonelSpecial

Well, the Christie and Higgins Clark were going to be my first suggestion but seeing as they have been taken off the table, and because you like short stories, I would suggest the annual Best American Mystery Short Stories. Good mix of subgenre and if you like a certain story, you can sometimes find other longer work by the same author.

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girldetective

A few of my favorite mystery writers are:

Frank Parrish (check on Amazon probably, start with the early books)

Jonathan Gash (anything with Lovejoy in the main, particularly the early books) (again check Amazon)

Earl Emerson's books (again good to start early in the series as its where the best ones lie)

The Water series by Sally Gunning, particularly the first 2

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snowy

Have you read any M.C. Beaton? I like her Hamish Macbeth series of novels. I'm not a big fan of mysteries but I really enjoy these.

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mixedmedia

I don't read mysteries, but my sister does, and she goes on and on and on about one writer and that is Ruth Rendell.

she also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Rendell

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fresnelly

Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone helped start the genre so why not give it a try? I certainly enjoyed it.

I last read Martin Cruz Smith's Wolves Eat Dogs, which is set today in and around Chernobyl. His depiction of life in the area is fascinating and the characters are very strong. I highly recommend it.

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shesus

Thanks guys, I'll write those authors down and check them out.

Snowy, I have read a few of MC Beaton's books (the Agatha Raisin series). I do enjoy reading her from time to time.

Mixed: I just skimmed through the wiki link and I'm very interested in Rendell's work now. One of her books was made into an Almodovar film. Very cool.

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sapiens

Over the course of the last month, my wife and I watched the first season of Foyle's War, a BBC series about a detective in England during WWII. We both enjoyed it, but my wife doesn’t like how everything comes together so perfectly at the end of an episode. I feel that's a characteristic of the detective/mystery genre as a whole.

I'm a fan of detective mysteries. Classics I have enjoyed include:

Dashiell Hammet books: I have a leather bound collection of Dashiell Hammet books that I found at a used book store. We almost named our son Dashiell. I like the name. The collection that I own includes Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man. I enjoyed all of them. I highly recommend Dashiell Hammet.

Mickey Spillane books: The Mike Hammer books are classic pulp fiction. Lots of violence, lots of sexuality. They are entertaining. Start at the beginning with I, The Jury.

Raymond Chandler: Lots of great detective fiction. The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, Farewell, My Lovely, etc. All of them are great. Many of them were made into movies later. The Big Sleep is a great, incoherent, film starring Humphrey Bogart as Phillip Marlowe.

More recent detective fiction I have enjoyed:

Walter Mosley: Easily Rawlins is a black detective during the 50s and 60s. The books are interesting. In addition to confronting the typical detective fiction villains (corrupt cops, immoral wealthy folk), Easy confronts racism and classism. Again, I would start at the beginning.

James Ellroy: Interesting Los Angeles based detective/mystery fiction. I particularly enjoyed the L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz).

Jonathan Lethem: Motherless Brooklyn is a great detective/mystery story published in 1999. The protagonist has Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s a good read.[COLOR="DarkSlateGray"]

---------- Post added at 08:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:57 PM ----------

I forgot one other one:

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. A detective story set in an alternative history: Post WWII survivors of the holocaust were given a Jewish state in Alaska. A non-observant Jewish detective investigates a murder in Alaska. An interesting read. (However, if you are interested in Michael Chabon, start with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay).

If anyone has any detective fiction recommendation, I would appreciate them.

Fremen

A few years ago we happened on a great set of books called the "Rabbi Small Mysteries" written by Harry Kemelman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here's the first one.
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They led me to a better appreciation of Judaism.
They also got me interested in the Peter Decker & Rina Lazarus mysteries by Faye Kellerman, which led to Faye's husband's (Jonathan Kellerman) mystery books starring Alex Delaware.

These aren't hardcore mysteries like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep, but they are pretty entertaining nonetheless.

We also enjoy the set of mysteries by Dick Francis that usually involves jockeys, or at the least, the horse-racing community in England.

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Ananas

If you're into British mysteries, try Reginald Hill.
Arms and the Woman;On Beulah Height; Asking for the Moon are just some of his books that feature one of the better detectives I've read in a while.

Another to try is Ngaio Marsh of the Christie era.

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levite

Well, obviously, there's the Sherlock Holmes canon. I love those. Some people swear by the Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L. Sayers: I am about 50% on those. The Thorndyke mysteries by Austin Freeman; The Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout; Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason series; the Father Brown series by G.K. Chesterton; Simenon's Maigret books: all are classics of the genre.

I never cared much for Martha Grimes' Peter Jury mysteries, but my mother, a conoisseuse of the genre, adores them, so they're probably worth your trying one....

If you like the hardboiled detective, nobody wrote finer stories than Raymond Chandler. His works are almost street poetry. Dashiell Hammett's works are excellent, though a bit grim. Ross MacDonald is OK-- he's considered nominally the third in the trinity of great hardboiled detective authors, although I never liked him anywhere near as well as Chandler or Hammett.

John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books are superb, though he is, unfortunately, a bit unpleasantly misogynist. The Spenser novels, by Robert B. Parker, were great in the early years-- he started writing them in the mid-Seventies-- and seemed to peak in the late 80s/early 90s, although he's still writing them as of today. Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series I thought was technically well done, though I felt no personal chemistry with it. I have always liked Jonathan Kellerman's long-running Alex Delaware series: the characters I find only 75% but his plotting is excellent. The V.I. Warshawski books by Sara Paretsky are well-written, and very well-plotted. I find Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus mysteries only so-so, but my ex used to swear by them, so you might like them, too.

Now, if you like your mysteries to be a bit more historical...there is the superb Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis; the Catherine LeVendeur series by Sharan Newman; The Alienist and Angel of Darkness, by Caleb Carr; Ellis Peters' classic Brother Cadfael series; and the incomparable Abel Jones mysteries of Owen Parry. All excellent.

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guy44

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories. The BEST mystery book I've ever read. I cannot recommend it enough. She also wrote a sort-of sequel, One Good Turn, which is very good, but not as great as the first. Seriously, Case Histories is just an amazing book.

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Baraka_Guru

If you want to try something a little different, give Paul Auster's New York Trilogy a try. At least read the first one, City of Glass.

It's more of a "metamystery." It is a cool look at the genre. "Literary" mystery, if you will.

I'd recommend it to anyone. It blew my mind.

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docbungle

Peter Straub's "Mystery" is a great mystery novel. Big, multi-layered, complex and rewarding.

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fast1

i like frank parrish as well!