Jack Reacher - Wow!

[5-element]

Since John Le Carre is being mentioned, another two authors come to mind:

Joseph Kanon ("The Prodigal Spy",  "Los Alamos", "The Good German")

Robert Harris ("Enigma", "Archangel", "Pompeii")

 

I would imagine that most people will have read "Child 44" By Tom Rob Smith???

 

[Gemonimo]

And how about  Sarah Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski novels?  I have read and re-read all of her books and find her style of writing enjoyable.  At the moment I'm re-reading Sue Grafton's C for Corpse... easy (and quick) reading.  I took it to the doctors surgery yesterday afternoon and had got halfway through before I was called and almost gave my place in the queue to someone else I was so engrossed.  As for Patricia Cornwell, well I totally agree that she has dropped of in quality.

[Stan Streason]

You really do have to read Michael Connelly books in order as Harry Bosch does progress throughout the series.

Lee Child can be read pretty much in any order.  At the end of one he has been left a house but it is gone by the middle of the next.

I thought the Elvis cole books pretty formuleic and slightly annoying for some reason (probably to do with the cartoon figure of Joe Pike and their willingness to kill a couple of dozen baddies in each book) but the last half dozen or so have really picked up both in plot and writing style.

No one has mentioned him on this thread but John Sandford's "Prey" series with Lucus Davenport are decent holiday reads.  You can read them a couple of places out of sequence but the character gradually does develop so not too far out of order.  His recent 4 books about Virgil Flowers are also worth a read - they are Lucus Davenport back to his roots, back without the trappings of power and responsibility.

Definitely not for the faint hearted and completely different from the series above, but I am working my way through Christopher Brookmyer at the moment.  Very Scottish - very gritty and down to earth (bad language abounds) - but great plots, extremely cynical and laugh out loud funny.  I have never wanted to shut my eyes whilst reading to avoid whats coming next but just last night a passage of someone "becoming a man" for the first time who's only experience of what to do has come from watching under the counter 1980's porn films had me saying out loud "oh no please don't - please don't....." whilst still reading on through tears of laughter.  (He did). 

[Russethouse]

 Reacher says he is going to sell the house he was left......couldn't have him settle down now could we ? [:)]

 Due to being introduced to Bosch via the two latest books I knew things about Bosch it would probably have ben better to find out as I went along..... I'm trying to get them in order now.......

 As I am soon to be a kindle owner I am just wondering why some books are on Kindle and some not....

[Renaud]

I know what Stan means about the Joe Pike role in the Elvis Cole stories. I think that it is a bit deo ex machina when the protagonist can wheel out a sociopathic superman type to kill the baddies ... but I feel that Robert Crais is actually developing Pike as a person. Soon he might even be vunerable!

Other sociopathic superman types are Hawk in the Spenser stories and Harlen Cobden's sports agent hero has an invunerable banker (!) to help him out.

Still the greatest thing about my memory disintergrating is that I can reread so many books not knowing how they will turn out. Just been through Maigret again.

[Frecossais]

Anyone read Jeffrey (or Geoffrey) Deaver books? I read one of a series about a detective in a wheelchair. His descriptions of how people were killed were sickening. I didn't read any more.

[virginia.c]

Agreed re 'sickening descriptions' and in fact you remind me why i can't read these very graphic authors.

I've just remembered Peter Robinson. Can't remember (surprise,surprise) his policeman hero but Robinson is an excellent story teller even if his language is slightly hackneyed.

And how about David Audley? Anthony Price's hero from years gone by? If you like your medieval history he will interest you and he was writing during the interesting cold war years also.

[5-element]

[quote user="virginia.c"]Agreed re 'sickening descriptions' and in fact you remind me why i can't read these very graphic authors.[/quote]

I tend to skim over the gory parts (found that Patricia Cornwell's were getting longer and more detailed all the time, going into the minutiae of forensic science) -

I am bringing back "Child 44" as it is such a gripping thriller and deserves to be read by anyone who is a thriller fan. Here is a "no spoiler" introduction to this Tom Rob Smith book:

" This runaway train-ride of a crime thriller will seize your attention from the first twenty emotionally wrenching pages and keep you hanging on for dear life for the remaining four hundred pages.  Set in Moscow in 1953, when Communism controlled every aspect of daily life, and when government officials were so fully committed to social perfection that they could insist (and even make themselves believe) that "there is no crime," the novel recreates the turmoil in the life of a State Security Force official who begins, reluctantly, to question the "facts" before him. 

Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a young veteran of World War II, now working for the MGB (Internal Security), is drawn into an investigation of the death of a four-year-old boy, supposedly struck and killed by a train.  The child's family believes he was murdered, and a witness has seen him with a stranger just before his death, but Leo, obeying official policy, conveys a subtle warning to the child's father, a fellow MGB officer, not to question the state's findings regarding the child's death.  To do so would reveal doubt, and that could be a fatal mistake. The mysterious witness, Leo discovers upon questioning, has seen "nothing."  His superiors believe that "Careless children, unless they were careless with their tongues, were not State Security concerns," and the case is closed, the  documents which do not agree with their determination of accidental death, altered."

[virginia.c]

Isn't it funny how some new titles call to you off the shelf and others don't? I hadn't succumbed to this one but i'll see if i can download an e version on to my ipad and will let you know what i think! Thanks for the tip.

[5-element]

Virginia, I have to warn you that there might be "sickening graphic descriptions".... of extreme poverty and destitution, as well as other kinds. But the story and atmospheric set-up are worth it.

[Frecossais]

Somehow I wasn't put off by the gory descriptions in Child 44. Yes they made me shudder, but I understood the mentality of the character who committed the atrocities, and they weren't gratuitous on the part of the author. Tim Robb Smith has written a follow-up which I also read, and I believe there's a third in the pipeline. Russians certainly walked a tightrope their whole lives during those times. I wonder how much different is the life of the Russian man or woman  these days.

[virginia.c]

When i say 'sickening' i refer to gratuitous fictional violence (often sexual). That is the type of fiction i try to avoid. When reading history of course there is nothing more 'sickening' than 'man's inhumanity to man' and some of the worst attrocities were inflicted on the Russian people by their own leaders.

It is interesting isn't it to compare those times with now? Communism seems to have given way to a more insidious 'mafia' tyranny and i suspect that the average Russian is no more free now in real terms than he or she was some years ago. I remember reading 'A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch' and the impact it had on me as a child of 12. I wonder how many there still are chained up in Siberia - whatever Putin and his apparatchiks would have us believe...