What to Read Now That You've Read Gone Girl

By now, seems like every mystery and thriller lover in the United States has read Gone Girl (or least, all the ones in our library system).  What to read next?  What's this summer's Gone Girl? These are the kinds of questions librarians get every day.  Here's one way to answer them...

 NoveList Plus describes the novel as

Most readalike lists that you'll find will build off of genre or tone, giving you a list of books that are also "psychological suspense".  Others will take elements of the plot such as "unreliable narrator" or major themes of the story to create a list of similar books.  It all depends on the kind of novel you enjoy!

You can also try readalikes by author.  NoveList also recommends, in its "You Might Also Like These..." feature in the Gone Girl library catalog record (scroll down to the bottom of the page), authors such as Tana French ("both French and Flynn write dark, literary suspense stories...[with] extremely flawed narrators..."), Erin Kelly ("keen insight into troubled characters"), Minette Walters ("Disturbing, Suspenseful, and Compelling"), and Michael Robotham ("Disturbing, Suspenseful, and Character-driven").

Here is a list of some likely contenders for a place on any mystery-lover's bookshelf, but particularly if you enjoyed Gone Girl:

Missing persons

Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay
He's Gone by Deb Caletti
Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda


Family secrets

The Dinner by Herman Koch
Defending Jacob by William Landay
The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver

Suspense

Heartbroken by Lisa Unger
Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton
Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
The Never List by Koethi Zan

Psychological thrillers

Drowned by Therese Bohman
Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach
The Vanishers by Heifi Julavits


Most titles were suggested by a magazine insert created by Check Me Out.

New Mysteries in Translation

With the success of books like Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and the Wallander mysteries by Henning Mankell (his standalone Man from Beijing has also been made into a movie), mysteries in translation have never been more popular!  If you have so far bucked this trend, perhaps you'll consider giving some of the library catalog's latest offerings a try.  We have mysteries translated from Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Italian, German, even Afrikaans!  Go ahead...take a dip in a truly international pool, and see what the rest of the world is reading! 

The Russian Donation by Christoph Spielberg

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus

Cell 8 by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström

The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero

The Stranger's Woes by Max Frei

A Pimp's Notes by Giorgio Faletti

Never Coming Back by Hans Koppel

Some Kind of Peace by Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff

Seven Days by Deon Meyer

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

The Last Good Man by A.J. Kazinski

Farewell to Freedom by Sara Blaedel

Strindberg's Star by Jan Wallentin

Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

Death in August by Marco Vichi


Also take a gander at our Booklists LibGuide, which has a wide selection of mystery lists!

Women of Suspense

Last summer, the novel Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn was all anyone could talk about.  It was a well written mystery about the disappearance of a young wife, but it was also a great novel about the marital problems and family issues of the couple.  After staying up late into the night to finish this story I was anxious to find more books like Gone Girl, that featured a gripping mystery that could also be called an amazing novel.

Luckily, there are other authors out there who write the same kind of literary suspense fiction that drew me into Gone Girl.  The ones I find myself most intrigued by are women writers.  These are the ones I read and enjoyed:


What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman has written lots of mysteries.  Some of them are part of a series that feature journalist turned detective Tess Monaghan.  Others are stand-alone novels that feature murder, disappearances, and secrets. 

The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah's books feature the same two detectives in every story, but it isn't necessary to read them in order.  (After I read The Wrong Mother I realized it was the second book in the "series".  The first is Little Face.)  Each book presents a situation that you can't help but be intrigued by, and then are impossible to put down. 

Promise Not to Tell: A Novel by Jennifer McMahon
Jennifer McMahon has written several suspense novels that feature grown-up women who are confronted with the demons of their past when a crime is committed in the present.  Many of the stories also feature a supernatural element too, such as ghosts or fairies.

The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
Heather Gudenkauf writes suspense novels centered around children and this book gives the point of view of several characters.  This is one I stayed up late to finish.


There are other women authors of suspense fiction that have been recommended to me that I haven't gotten around to trying yet:

Nicci French

Rosamund Lupton

Denise Mina

Ruth Rendell

Chevy Stevens

Erin Kelly

Tana French


And of course, Gillian Flynn also wrote two novels before Gone Girl.  Dark Places and Sharp Objects share similar themes to Gone Girl.  And of course, they keep you up until the small hours of dawn trying to finish them!  Happy late nights! 
 

Mysteries Set on Trains

Train travel.

Hours or days spent in close contact with strangers, in a long line of enclosed but connected spaces. An odd little temporary community, that will break apart at the final stop.

Or lose members along the way to intermediate stops.

Or to murder.

Many classic works of mystery have used railways as a setting. This post will help you explore the rolling world of the train mystery.

---

Of course, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) comes first to mind for many as the train murder mystery, setting the style for many later works. But you might not know that Christie did another mystery set on a train, also involving her famous detective Hercule Poirot, The Mystery of the Blue Train.

One of Christie's Miss Marple stories also revolves around a train ride, the 4:50 from Paddington.

---

 

While more of a thriller than a mystery, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, made into the film of the same title by Alfred Hitchcock, perfectly exploits the "intimate stranger" aspect of shared rail travel as the basis for a chilling tale.

---

Sheldon Russell's Hook Runyon is a "yard dog", a "railroad bull" -- security hired to police the rail yards and station. Unfit for military service because he is shy an arm, Hook lives in a caboose and becomes involved in mysteries in the gritty world of hobos, pickpockets, and moonshiners, sometimes traveling further afield to solve crimes out along the rails. Set in the 1940s, toward the end of World War II.

 

The Hook Runyon series:

1. The Yard Dog

2. The Insane Train

3. Dead Man's Tunnel

---



 

Young railway porter Jim Stringer moves to an early-1900s London to better himself. But the world of the railroads in the big city is a far cry from his younger days, and he finds himself embroiled in an environment of thieves, saboteurs, and intrigue. Jim works his way up to Railway Detective, following adventures and crimes along the rails.

 

 



The Jim Stringer, Steam Detective series
by Andrew Martin:

1. The Necropolis Railway (2002)
2. The Blackpool Highflyer (2004)
3. The Lost Luggage Porter (2006)
4. Murder At Deviation Junction (2007)
5. Death on a Branch Line (2008)
6. The Last Train to Scarborough (2009)
7. The Somme Stations (2011)
8. The Baghdad Railway Club (2012)

---

---

 Mysteries Set on Trains

 



Lilian Jackson Braun - The Cat Who Blew the Whistle
Michael Crichton - The Great Train Robbery
Agatha Christie - 4:50 from Paddington, Murder on the Orient Express, The Mystery of the Blue Train
Mary Daheim - Loco motive : a bed-and-breakfast mystery
Dianne Day - Death Train to Boston: a Fremont Jones mystery
Carola Dunn - Murder on the Flying Scotsman
Dick Francis - The Edge
Kerry Greenwood - Murder on the Ballarat train : a Phryne Fisher mystery
Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train (made into the Hitchcock film)
Alfred Hitchcock, director - Strangers on a Train, The Lady Vanishes (film, based on the book The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White)
Jim Lehrer - Super
Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy
Andrew Martin - Jim Stringer series
Ian Rankin - Tooth and Nail: an Inspector Rebus novel
Sharon Rowse - The Silk Train Murder : a mystery of the Klondike
Sheldon Russell - Dead Man's Tunnel, The Insane Train, The Yard Dog
Michele Scott - Corked by Cabernet
Dan Simmons - Drood
Nicola Upson - An expert in murder : a new mystery featuring Josephine Tey
Ethel Lina White - The Wheel Spins (basis for the film The Lady Vanishes)

---

---

The title of the first book in Edward Marston's Inspector Robert Colbeck series says it all: The Railway Detective. Set in a murky 1850s London, the ten books of the series presents Colbeck (who comes to be known as "The Railway Detective" for his successes solving crimes committed along the rails) with a wide variety of challenges. Rich with period detail, and lots of gritty action.

The library currently has only the first book of the series in the collection.

If you read the first book and enjoy it you may request

that the other titles be added,

or utilize our ILL (Inter Library Loan) service.

 

Click here to log in and suggest a purchase.  

 

The Inspector Robert Colbeck series:

 

1. The  Railway Detective (2004)

2. The Excursion Train (2005)

3. The Railway Viaduct (2006)

4. The Iron Horse (2007)

5. Murder on the Brighton Express (2008)

6. The Silver Locomotive Mystery (2009)

7. Railway to the Grave (2010)

8. Blood on the Line (2011)

9. The Stationmaster's Farewell (2012)

10. Peril on the Royal Train (2013)

 

________________________________________________________

 

Visit the Railroads in New Mexico Libguide. 

Mysteries Set in Japan

The intricate etiquette-driven society of Japan is an

effective setting for mystery stories, whether in the feudal past or the business-world present. 

---

I.J. Parker's Sugawara Akitada series is set in the 11th century:

"From the author of The Dragon Scroll comes an ingenious new novel of murder and malfeasance in ancient Japan, featuring the detective Sugawara Akitada. The son of reduced nobility forced to toil in the Ministry of Justice, Akitada is relieved when an old friend, Professor Hirata, asks him to investigate a friend's blackmail. Taking a post at the Imperial University, he is soon sidetracked from his primary case by the murder of a young girl and the mysterious disappearance of an old man - a disappearance that the Emperor himself declares a miracle. Rashomon Gate is a mystery of magnificent complexity and historical detail that will leave readers yearning for more." - from the book jacket, Rashomon Gate

The Sugawara Akitada series:

1. Rashomon Gate (2002)
2. The Hell Screen (2003)
3. The Dragon Scroll (2005)
4. Black Arrow (2006)
5. Island of Exiles (2007)
6. The Convict's Sword (2009)
7. The Fires of the Gods (2010)
8. The Masuda Affair (2011)
9. Death on an Autumn River (2011) (Kindle exclusive)

---

Dale Furutani's Matsuyama Kaze series is set in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), and is rich with the samurai lore that makes Japanese history so distinctive.

Matsuyama Kaze is a ronin, a masterless samurai, seeking to honor the last order given to him by his old master. In the course of his travels, Kaze encounters mysteries that test him to the limit.

Richly atmospheric, filled with historically accurate detail, this series evokes the world of long-ago Japan and the often lonely life of an honor-bound warrior.

Dale Furutani's Matsuyama Kaze "Samurai" series:

1. Death at the Crossroads (1998)
2. The Jade Palace Vendetta (1999)
3. Kill the Shogun (2000)

---

Laura Joh Rowland's Sano Ichiro series is also set in feudal Japan during the 1600s.

Sano Ichiro is the shogun's sosakan-sama - "most honorable investigator of events, situations, and people" - and as such must interact with all levels of feudal Japanese culture.

1. Shinju (1994)
2. Bundori (1996)
3. The Way of the Traitor (1997)
4. The Concubine's Tattoo (1998)
5. The Samurai's Wife (2000)
6. Black Lotus (2001)
7. The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria (2002)
8. The Dragon King's Palace (2003)
9. The Perfumed Sleeve (2004)
10. The Assassin's Touch (2005)
11. The Red Chrysanthemum (2006)
12. The Snow Empress (2007)
13. The Fire Kimono (2008)
14. The Cloud Pavilion (2009)
15. The Ronin's Mistress (2011)
16. The Incense Game (2012)

---

Moving up to present-day Tokyo:

---

Rei Shimura is a young Japanese-American English teacher living in Tokyo who stumbles upon mysteries while dealing in antiques! Rich with detail from the author's own experiences while living in Japan.

Sujata Massey's Rei Shimura series:

1. The Salaryman's Wife (1997)
2. Zen Attitude (1998)
3. The Flower Master (1999)
4. The Floating Girl (2000)
5. The Bride's Kimono (2001)
6. The Samurai's Daughter (2003)
7. The Pearl Diver (2004)
8. The Typhoon Lover (2005)
9. Girl in a Box (2006)
10. Shimura Trouble (2008)

---

 John Rain is a half-Japanese half-American assassin who works the mean streets of Tokyo.

The John Rain suspense thriller series by Barry Eisler:

1. Rain Fall (2002)
2. Hard Rain (2003)
     aka Blood from Blood
3. Rain Storm (2004)
     aka Choke Point
4. Killing Rain (2005)
     aka One Last Kill
5. The Last Assassin (2006)
6. Requiem for an Assassin (2007)
7. The Detachment (2011)

---

Other mysteries set in Japan:

Michael Crichton - Rising Sun
Keigo Higashino - The Devotion of Suspect X
Stephen Hunter - The 47th Samurai
Natsuo Kirino - Grotesque, Out
Don Lee - Country of Origin
James Melville - The Body Wore Brocade
Miyuki Miyabe - All She Was Worth, Shadow Family, The Devil's Whisper, The Sleeping Dragon
Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief
Asa Nonami - The Hunter
Arimasa Osawa - Shinjuku Shark
David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero
Soji Shimada - The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
Akimitsu Takagi - The Informer, Honeymoon To Nowhere, The Tattoo Murder Case
Peter Tasker - Buddha Kiss
Shuichi Yoshida - Villain

Million for a Morgue

Love mysteries?  We sure do here at abcreads, including forensic crime solvers.  So we were intrigued to find out about the Million for a Morgue competition, which invites mystery fans to take part in a unique fundraising project by the University of Dundee (Scotland) to help raise funds to build a morgue in their Thiel Center of Excellence.

"The idea to involve the crime writers was borne out of the friendship between Professor Sue Black, the Director of the CAHID at the University of Dundee, and crime fiction writer Val McDermid. Professor Black has often assisted Val with the forensic details required for her crime stories and they have appeared at book festival events together discussing the thought process behind crime fiction," explains the Million for a Morgue website. "Everyone who donates to the Million For A Morgue campaign will get to vote for their favourite author or authors to determine who will have their name on the Thiel Centre of Excellence at the University of Dundee. You can vote now by visiting the authors page and selecting your favourite author."

The authors to vote for are: Lee Child; Jeffery Deaver; Jeff Lindsay; Val McDermid; Stuart MacBride; Tess Gerritsen; Peter James; Kathy Reichs; Mark Billingham; & Harlan Coben.  So far, looks like Tess Gerritsen is in the lead!

Also on the site, you can read about Professor Black & the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, the Thiel method of embalming,  & enter to win a murder tour of Aberdeen in the company of Stuart MacBride! (The murder tour winner will be picked from the hat on 29 February. They will only pay for travel to Aberdeen from anywhere in the UK.)

Girl Sleuths

Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce mysteries, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie & its sequels The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag & A Red Herring Without Mustard, have been very popular mysteries.  In this series, Flavia is precocious & literate 11-year-old sleuth.  There have been many mysteries featuring girl sleuths, but most of them are found in children's or young adult fiction.  If you follow Flavia, you might also consider revisiting (or suggesting to your daughters) some of these novels of junior suspense:

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller

Sammy Keyes & the Hotel Thief by by Wendelin Van Draanen

The Night Flyers by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

The Dark Stairs by Betsy Byars

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams

Lulu Dark Can See through Walls by Bennett Madison

Assassin by Patricia Finney

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

Also, Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women who Created Her by Melanie Rehak is a very enjoyable & informative read for adults interested in learning about the backstory of the series.

Here are some links to help you rediscover those most classic of girl sleuths, Nancy Drew & Trixie Belden:

The Mysterious History of Nancy Drew

Mildred A. Wirt Benson, author of 23 of the original 30 Nancy Drew Mystery Stories

Stratemeyer Syndicate exhibit

Trixie-Belden.com

Random House's Trixie Belden page

What do your books say?

In reading Sara Gran's excellent new novel Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, I began thinking of the clues people provide about themselves in their purchases and possessions. Some of them are obvious, the clothes one wears or the car one drives. Others can only be noted in the confines of a home - the music and art, even the food in the cabinet. Many of these clues we read and process subconsciously, part of what makes us functioning humans.

Clare DeWitt, in attempting to solve the Case of the Green Parrot, looks first for the clues we hide - those in the medicine cabinet, the safe, and under the bed - dismissing them as things the subject thinks are important. The real importance lies in those things we ignore the significance of. Of course, books are most telling to me, though you can't just limit yourself to the titles on the shelf. Those, of course, are what the subject thinks are important. Dig a little deeper and open those books, view the cracks in the spines, and the yellowing of the pages. Is that Nobel prize winner virtually untouched? Are there scribbles in the margins? Which page does the cookbook automatically fall open to? Which books are by the sofa or shoved under the bed? How are the books arranged on the shelf? Perhaps only a librarian would care or see the patterns there. Books have a lot to say, more than just the words on the page, if only we look for it. And browsing a bookshelf is a lot more acceptable behavior when visiting a person's house than rummaging in the medicine cabinet or the sock drawer.

When you are a heavy library user, you deprive your guests of this font of information about both your reading habits and your inner self. You, of course can check out your reading history in your ABC libraries account, though no one else can see it. However, most library users have their own book collections at home, so all is not lost. So, how much could an average person learn about you from your books? Even better, how much could a librarian learn about you?

Featured Author: Steve Hockensmith

(Cowboys + Mystery Fiction) x (Zombies + Romance Fiction) = What Next?


Author Steve Hockensmith is making a name for himself with entertaining, genre-blending fiction series.

First in the saddle is the Holmes on the Range series, cowboy mysteries set in the 1890s. Cowboy brothers Otto “Big Red” Amlingmeyer and Gustav “Old Red” Amlingmeyer are just two more cowhands drifting between jobs, until the fateful night when they read something new around the campfire: a Sherlock Holmes story. Old Red finds a purpose in life, starts "detectiving" (with Big Red as his Watson), and their lives will never be the same as they pursue mysteries amid stampedes, rustlers, Holmes-hating English aristocrats and a cannibal named “Hungry Bob.”

The series follows their adventures as they seek to mix cowboy wisdom with Holmes's methods in a time and place where justice was often swift, sometimes arbitrary, and most folks just didn't have a clue what a clue was.

Holmes on the Range (2006)

On the Wrong Track (2007)

The Black Dove (2008)

The Crack in the Lens (2009)

World's Greatest Sleuth (2011)

To see how other authors are working with Arthur Conan Doyle's legacy, visit the Sherlock Holmes Universe LibGuide.

Hockensmith went another direction in 2010, proving himself a master of the mashup (a current term for pastiches that blend several genres) with the release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, the followup prequel to 2009's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by "Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith." Both titles were New York Times bestsellers.



His next installment in these monstrous adaptations of a classic is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After, wherein the new Mrs. Darcy is faced with the problem of having to deal with husband Fitzwilliam being bitten by an "unmentionable." This third book promises to be as popular as the first two. Visit Steve Hockensmith's website for information on these works and what mashups he might be tackling next.

See what other (non-monstrous) authors are doing in the Jane Austen Universe.

More monstrous Jane Austen mashups:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance -- now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem! by "Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith"

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by "Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters"

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange

Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford -- featuring Jane Austen herself as a deathless bookstore owner!

The Girl Who: The Millennium Trilogy on abcreads book banter

First off, the news: according to the L.A. Times, Stieg Larsson's father & brother will be on CBS Sunday Morning (tomorrow!) to talk about Millennium Book #4! Don't miss it!

But back to our book banter forums. We have a new section called "The Millennium Trilogy" for you to write about all things Stieg Larsson-the books; the movies; the new biography of Larsson, The Man Who Left Too Soon; Reg Keeland of Albuquerque, Stieg Larsson's English translator; the author himself; the tour of Salander's Sweden; Larsson's disputed legacy... Love the books? Hate the books? Let us know your opinions on our forums! Here are some articles to give you something to talk about (may contain spoilers):

The Girl Who Read Enough of Stieg Larsson

The Stieg Larsson Phenomenon

The Original Stieg Larsson

Göran Lindberg and Sweden's dark side

The World of Millennium (includes a plug from the 2010 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature!)

"The Author Who Played With Fire" by Christopher Hitchens

"Stieg Larsson’s Heir? Camilla Läckberg"

Stieg Larsson's biographer Barry Forshaw explains what makes the Millennium Trilogy such a worldwide phenomenon:

2010 Edgar Award Winners Announced!

Here's a couple of winners of this year's Edgar Awards that you can find in the library catalog:

Best Novel-The Last Child by John Hart

Best First Novel by an American Author-In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff

Named for Edgar Allan Poe, the Edgar Awards are awarded annually by the Mystery Writers of America, for distinguished work in the mystery genre. For more winners, visit The Edgar website.

We Remember Tony

Last Tuesday we showed a film called "We Remember Tony", a tribute to Tony Hillerman. The film is a one hour remembrance of Tony Hillerman, as more than a dozen writers and friends share stories of how his work and friendship affected their writing and personal lives. The video is hosted by bestselling author Craig Johnson. Authors recalling Tony and his help to them include Joe Badal, Judith Van Gieson, Steve Havill, Margaret Tessler, and Pari Noskin Taichert.

We had a lot of questions about buying a copy of the film. Here is the contact information for the videographer:

Laureen Pepersack
1116 Avenida Codorniz
Santa Fe, NM 87507

or
REV Digital Video, her company, ph 471-8441 .

Thanks to everyone who stopped by & made this event a success!

The CWA Dagger Awards

Mystery fans, April brings us to the Edgar Awards! The 2010 Edgar Awards will be presented on April 29th. Watch the Edgar website for news on the award winners! The 2010 Grand Master is Dorothy Gilman, author of the Mrs. Pollifax series.

In the meantime, have you checked out the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Awards? The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) was founded by John Creasey in 1953 and it has become a distinctive feature on the crime-fiction landscape in the UK. Past officers of the CWA have included Ian Rankin, Peter Lovesey, & Dick Francis. They give out the Dagger Awards annually: the Gold Dagger for the best crime novel by an author of any nationality, originally written in English; the International Dagger for crime, thriller, suspense novels or spy fiction which have been translated into English from their original language; the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for thrillers set in any period and include, but are not limited to, spy fiction and/or action/ adventure stories; the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, awarded in memory of CWA founder John Creasey, for first books by previously unpublished writers; and the Cartier Diamond Dagger, which is a lifetime achievement award. Past recipients of the Diamond Dagger have included Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, Elmore Leonard, and Colin Dexter.

For more information on the Dagger Awards, visit the CWA website. We will also be having a Gold Dagger Award display in the library during the month of April with an accompanying booklist.