My Favorite Crime Mystery Authors/Series

I love mysteries, but I have a funny relationship with mystery novels. 

A dash of mystery makes most things better.  

The slow drip of information that leads to discovery after discovery.

For this list, I kept things "real world." The settings had to be present day or historical. No magic, no scifi tech, and no alternate universes/worlds permitted. Spy books are real world, but I didn't include those either. I loved Spy Kids and The Bourne Identity. Both have strong mystery elements, but then I'd start coming up with all sorts of other books I love with mystery elements that aren't considered mysteries by many. Also, I stuck to fiction. The Woman Who Smashed Code and The Spy Who Couldn't Spell were great, but I didn't think they belonged here.

The Short List

1. Sherlock Holmes
2. Agatha Christie
3. Encyclopedia Brown
4. Clue Books
5. The surprise vegetarian book
6. Edgar Allen Poe
7. Three Investigators
8. Hardy Boys
9. John Scalzi
10. John Grisham

It's an odd list, I know. 

I've actually read a much larger selection than the list entails. I tend to try an author, enjoy a case, and then promptly never read them again. MC Beaton introduced me to Agatha once. Another time, I enjoyed meeting Aurora Teagarden in Real Murders by Charlaine Harris. Harry Bosch's daughter had a run in with Triads in Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly. I almost read A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton twice, because I forgot I'd read it. That's not a great sign, but, in it's defense, it rang familiar from the first several pages. The ending was memorable enough that, once I worked up the courage, I flipped to the end and verified my suspicions. 

Recently, I tried Dorothy Gillman's Mrs. Pollifax series, Rita Mae Brown's Sneaky Pie Brown series, and Harlan Coben's Mylar Bolton series. They were all one and done. 

I attempted to read Along Came a Spider by Robert Patterson. I almost put it down after the prologue. It was a reference to real history, so I soldiered on to the meet the detective....and immediately put it down after reading about the crime scene. 

I can handle the darkness/crime aspects of mysteries better when it's visual. You'd think that would make it worse (and it can), but TV tends to censor things and I'm not afraid to look away, fast-forward, or skip an episode. I would watch way more mysteries, but Carrie is even more sensitive to the darkness/crime aspects than I am. I convinced Carrie to watch a chunk of Season 1 of Castle with me before Shane, because Mal from Firefly was a main character (aka Nathan Fillion in real life). We stopped, because, "Does there really have to be a murder every time?" I'd love to watch Monk with her (because they're sillier), but it's not available on any of the streaming platforms we pay for.

The Long List

10. John Grisham - Grisham tends to write legal mysteries. Those are often a 'meh' for me. However, he does it well, so I have enjoyed some of his work in the past. I know I read Runaway Jury, but there are several other books of his that sounded familiar when I was reading summaries (though it doesn't help multiple have become movies!). Grisham taught me the word "tort." The books are more likely to be wired in technical and legal terminology than gory details which is mostly a plus. He's a local philanthropist to Charlottesville, too. I've meant to give his Theodore Boone Kid Lawyer books a try at some point. However, the truth is I almost replaced him on this list. I haven't read anything by him in a while. He's an easy name that comes to mind for me, but I just finished a book by Jacqueline Windspear and I remember much more about her book than any of his. 

9. John Scalzi - Scalzi is more known as a sci-fi writer, but I recently listened to Locked In. It's a sci fi mystery! The main character is an FBI agent investigating a crime. It's the future so there are hi-tech hijinks, but I like that. It was written as a police procedural, but the figuring out how the world worked was extra fun. I liked it enough I bough the sequel Head On to listen to next. Scalzi pulls off a trick that the only other author I know of to do well is Ann Leckie (Ancillary Justice): He never reveals the gender of the main character. The MC is a victim of a disease that left them completely paralyzed. In the future, they have robots that allow people who are locked in to control and interact with the real world. I listened to the 'boy' version narrated by Wil Wheaton, but someone else could listen to the 'girl' narration by Amber Benson and may envision the character differently. It has no bearing on the story, but could impact how attached/similar someone feels to the MC. The MC's last name was Shane, so that immediately made me assume they were a he from my own personal experiences. 

Bonus - I started on the Scalzi kick because the Dispatcher series was free on Audible+. Those were more science-fantasy mysteries. I really liked them, too. They walked the border between being dark enough to be different than my normal reads, but didn't go into enough details or darkness that I said, "Yuck!" and walked away. They were clearly streamlined to be audiobooks, too, so they were fast listens and a lot of fun.

I might have rated Scalzi higher, but all of these books were ones I've read recently. The next several rankers have the advantage of extreme nostalgia.

8. The Hardy Boys - I recognize A LOT of Hardy Boys covers. That's 50/50 from reading and from shelving them (I worked in a library as a page for my college years). Ironically, I can't tell you the plots of many of them. I read them so long ago. I remember the Boxcar Children more vividly, because I reread the first book with Shane and there's an exhibit in the Greenville Children's museum. I even referenced them in a Maine blogpost. However, I would bet a hefty sum I read way more of the Hardy Boys as a kid. I read some Nancy Drew, as well, but I preferred the Boys because I'm a boy (I was a shallow kid like that).

7. The Three Investigators - The Three Investigators were my favorite mystery group as a kid. While the plots are a mystery to me (Ha!), I remember more about the characters. I thought their secret abandoned trailer hideout in the junkyard was the coolest thing ever! During one of their mysteries, one of the boys, Jupiter I think, is SCUBA diving. He realizes he's in danger, but can't figure out why. He keeps running his hand along the SCUBA take line to confirm it's not tangled or leaking air, but he feels sick and gets loopy. Upon resurfacing, they discover the tank was empty! He was breathing CO2, but someone had rigged the gauge to look like the tank was cool. I don't know why, but that moment has always stuck with me. 

6. Edgar Allen Poe - Do you remember how I said I prefer things not too dark? Cause here's the exception: The King of Macabre poetry himself. Poe is probably tame compared to some way out there, but I went through a phase of loving the creepy stuff and Poe was my guy. Even the way he died is a creepy mystery. I probably had to first read Poe for school. I started to learn more about him and read his short stories. The Tell-Tale Heart was one of them. I'm pretty sure I read it first on my own and then later on for school.  He came up in Poetry units, as well. The cant, rhythm, and rhyme of some of his poems like the Raven fascinated me (still do!). Back in the day, we used to have large literature books in class full of short stories. I'd flip through and read his whether they were assigned or not. 

After reading Poe, I started noticing all sorts of other things referenced his work. There was even a Simpsons episode where Bart was the raven! 

5. The Surprise Vegetarian Book - I wish I knew the title or the author of this book. I've wanted to go back and reread it. This was a recommendation from John when we both worked at Pohick. "Mike, you've got to read this. You'll never see the end coming." There was a murder. The MC was looking into it, but he runs across this mysterious guy who was also looking into it. All sorts of weird stuff happens and....wait...the mysterious guy is a militant vegan who investigating animal cruelty and the murder stuff was just a bonus? Turns out pigs can get rid of a lot of evidence. Annoyingly, I can remember quotes from the book. The book is set in Florida (where all the crazy stuff happens) and the MC describes his step-dad as "from the generation where it was better to get skin cancer than dare to look pale." And yet, my internet-research-fu can't discern which book I'm talking about! I already threw some spoilers into the mix, but I won't throw more in case someone is actually reading this mysterious book on my top mysteries list! 

4. CLUE - A format of mystery book I don't see much anymore are the shorts. I remember eagerly ordering Clue books from the Scholastic Book Club order forms. I had the game, I read the books! Mr. Body somehow died or disappeared in each short story and it was up to the reader to figure out who did it, why, and how. There was always a reset and then a new mystery, so it was a lot like a sitcom. Still, I loved them! They weren't good for rereads, because I tend to have a great memory for books. 

3. Encyclopedia Brown - I liked Encyclopedia Brown even more than the Clue books. I reread some with Shane and I was surprised by how many solutions I could recall! In particular, I remembered I was salty as a kid when I got the answer wrong to the signed sword from "The First Bull Run" and therefore knew the answer reading with Shane! Shane didn't stay interested, though. The difficulty level of the mysteries vary and I was more willing to be wrong as a kid than he is. I ended up doing lots of internet research on Encyclopedia Brown and basking in nostalgia instead of continuing the books with him. I highly recommend these as a fun and quick series to make you think.

2. Agatha Christie - Out of all the random mystery authors I've read, I always come back to Agatha Christie. I think she is the most technically skilled mystery out there hands down. I have never fully solved one of her novels, but can always find the threads when I look back. She has some amazing twists here, too, that I don't want to spoil. The most recent book of hers I read was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Unfortunately, I already knew the twist. I'd heard about it elsewhere on a show and didn't remember the name of the exact book, but that gave me the game far sooner than I ever would have realized. Even though I was pretty sure I knew what was coming, it was a great read and I appreciated the technical skill it took her to pull it off. So again, I think Agatha Christie is the most intelligent/skilled mystery writer of all time. I think there's a lot more humor in her books than people realize, but the age of the stories prevents some of it from coming through. I felt like I was just missing jokes in Ackroyd, but there were still descriptions I smiled at.

1. Sherlock Holmes - While Agatha is more skilled, I will always have a soft spot for Sherlock Holmes. I love the bromance between Holmes and Watson. The short stories were quick payoffs and the adventures are just fun. I remember reading The Death of Sherlock Holmes in one of those great classroom English literature collections in school as well as reading the stories for fun. When I borrowed Nana's kindle as an adult/young father, I downloaded the first book from Project Gutenberg (They distribute free ebooks that reside in the public commons). The stories still held up. Holmes has successfully made the transition to other forms of media, too. I liked the series with Cumberbatch better than the movies with Downey Jr, but both are fun. The series eventually got too far out there for me, but I'll never forget the Sherlock Holmes Girls that kept posting outside my classroom door when I was in room 121B at Centreville High School!