Looking for new author recommendation

[Kanewpadle]

+1 on John D McDonald. The Travis McGee series spans 21 novels.

 

[5Wire]

Greg Iles

Dick Francis/Felix Francis

Nelson Demille

Tony Hillerman/Anne Hillerman

Totally with ya here, especially Demille and Tony Hillerman. I would add Brad Taylor.

 

[Texas Star]

Wilbur Smith for sure. I'd recommend starting with 'Shout at the Devil' then 'Dark of the Sun'. Both BTW made into films.

Also a strong recommendation for John D. MacDonald., amazing writer, his Travis McGee series & his early Americana Crime novels R Top Drawer.

I didn't really like, Shout at the Devil. Too slapstick, but Lee Marvin's portrayal of the drunk elephant poacher was right on.

Dark of the Sun/The Train From Katanga was far better, I thought. Left me wondering if Smith himself had been a mercenary in the Congo.

I loved the summary of one character: "It was the measure of Wally Hendry that he had been six months in the Congo and spoke not a word of French."

 

[Texas Star]

I'll add one more recommendation. If you read these, you'll have to devote some serious time to it. And maybe read them more than once to really get it. And you gotta read them in order for it all to make sense.

These novels are often referred to as James Ellroy's "American Crime Trilogy" because it consists of three books...American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's a Rover.

I won't give away plots, but briefly:

American Tabloid details the forces behind the election of JFK and the plot that was conceived to assassinate him. The plot is remarkably believable and a lot of the characters in the book are real...JFK, Lee Oswald, Guy Bannister, Jimmy Hoffa, Bobby Kennedy, and on and on. Details of the Bay of Pigs sound as if they could have been lifted from government files.

The Cold Six Thousand gets into the post-JFK years and on into Vietnam and the CIA's role in drug smuggling. Again, lots of the characters are real people...Jack Ruby, J. D. Tippit, Allan Dulles, LBJ, etc., etc. This book picks up immediately after JFK's murder and the cover up surrounding it. J. Edgar Hoover is featured heavily in this book, and the book's portrayal of him is actually backed up in real life by historical documents and personal recollections of the man. It is not a flattering picture of him.

Blood's a Rover (in a nutshell) follows J. Edgar Hoover's mental unraveling and branches off into the anti-communist/anti-labor movements. I admit this was the hardest of the books for me to follow for some reason, so I can't really give a good synopsis of it. Might be because the Cold War and its events doesn't interest me all that much, I don't know. I can quote parts of the first two novels verbatim, but I can't do that with Blood's a Rover.

A warning here. If lots of profanity, extreme and graphic violence (think of Pacino's Scarface on speed and coke), strange sex, and reprehensible characters are a turn off for you, then disregard this recommendation. Really, just forget it.

These books are so strongly written, they make what we normally think of as hardboiled noir fiction (Chandler and Hammett for example) look like soft scrambled eggs.

So, how does his graphic content compare to that of Thomas Harris? Did you read,Manhunter/ Red Dragon and, The Silence of the Lambs?

Some think Robert B. Parker's Spenser private eye series was too graphic. I think they're pretty gutless and should be reading a different genre of book.

 

[Watchdog]

So, how does his graphic content compare to that of Thomas Harris? Did you read,Manhunter/ Red Dragon and, The Silence of the Lambs?

They can be compared, of course, but there aren't many similarities. Lecter is an extremely organized psychopath. Francis Dolarhyde (in Red Dragon) is organized in a certain way...the way he displays his victims for his own satisfaction. So for Lecter and Dolarhyde, there's a sort of finesse to their murders.

All the killers in Ellroy's trilogy are just gangster crooks and thugs and CIA contract killers. Murder is a job to them, though sometimes they're told to make it as grisly as possible and often told to make the victims hard to identify if/when their bodies are found.

If the styles of Ellroy and Harris were compared in architectural terms, Harris' work would be Art Deco or maybe Art Nouveau. Ellroy's style would be compared to Brutalism.

For me, the Harris characters have a style to them, for lack of a better word. Ellroy's characters, including JFK and his brother Bobby, really have little or no redeeming features.

 

[H Richard]

Only one I read that I don't think I see here is Clive Cussler. He has several series of action adventure.

 

[Chino74]

Regarding 'Shout at the Devil' The Character of Flyn O'Flynn what a character! That role was meant for Lee Marvin...literally it was written just for him it seems...I cannot imagine anyone else playing it. Ya the first half of the novel is lighter & somewhat comical., it turns about half way through into a pretty brutal story., much as in many Smith Novels his characters travel their arc to the logical end., not always [or even often] the happy ending...thats' why he is a great author IMO.

 

[Onomea]

Another good writer, detective story genre and atmospheric, is Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series. Russian cop, with settings mostly in Russia. "Gorky Park," maybe some have seem the movie, is the first in the series.

 

[walkin jack]

The late Robert B. Parker The Spenser books A wise cracking gumshoe that likes to play rough.

I just discovered Harlan Coben. Read 3 of his books and he's no Michael Connelly or john Sandford He is a good writer and his books are very entertaining.

 

[MajorDude]

This is not a new but old and really good author. Kenneth Roberts. If you are into historical fiction, these are some of the best books ever written in my opinion. They were written in the 30s and 40s and unfortunately, long out of print, but some have been resurrected as large format paperbacks and also Kindle and available on Amazon. Some of my favorites: Northwest Passage (French and Indian War, Rogers' Rangers, was made into a movie), Oliver Wiswell (American Revolution from the Loyalist perspective), Lydia Bailey (rollicking love story that races from Haiti to France to North Africa) If you read one you will be looking for the others. That's what happened to me.

 

[rond]

Tony Dunbar is a good read.

 

[ladder13]

I like Saul of Tarsus.

 

[TX-Dennis]

I like to reread Taylor Caldwell's Biblically based fiction now and then.

Dear and Glorious Physician is a fictionalized look at the life of Luke.

Great Lion of God is a fictionalized look at the life of Paul of Tarsus.

Those I have on my shelf and have read several times each. I believe she also wrote a fictional account of the life of Judas Iscariot, but I do not have that one.

Another series I reread every few years is the James Herriot books. All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, All Creatures Great and Small, and The Lord God Made Them All. They are wonderful, funny, and poignant memoirs of his veterinary practice in Yorkshire.

There are a few other classics I like to reread from time to time including Ben Hur, The Robe, and Don Quixote.

 

[Texas Star]

John Sandford moved from MN to NM a few years ago and I think it broadened his perspective and helped him write better books.

I like his Virgil Flowers series okay, but prefer the Lucas Davenport books to those about the half-hippie Flowers.