Who are your FAVORITE SLEUTHS?

[SeaBookGuy]

The Chee/Leaphorn series are terrific on audio read by George Giudall!

[mikemc2]

I would submit the Peter Diamond novels by Peter Lovesey, the Hennesy & Yellich mysteries by Peter Turnbull and Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L...Diamond_novels

[JackNolte]

Travis McGee all the way. Best mystery series of all time, hands down.

[carmenchu]

Some missing favourites (to be found at http://www.gutenberg.org/ and/or http://www.manybooks.net/):

• Charlie Chan (& others) by Earl Derr Biggers
• Big 'Un and Little 'Un (& others) by Louis Tracy
  (also some ripping adventures)
• Hamilton Cleek, "the man of the forty faces" by Thomas W. Hanshew
  (thoroughly unbelievable, but with some fine plots)
• The Man in The Corner by Baroness Emma Orczy
  (a favourite of Tommy and Tuppence)
• Mr. Reader by Edgar Wallace: his Mind is worth looking into!

Now, if one can stand SF/Fantasy (some people cannot) there are some excellent mystery/detective plots by Lois McMaster Bujold, featuring:

• Miles Vorkosigan, in Mountains of Mourning, Cetaganda, Memory, and all the last Lord Auditor Vorkosigan books;
• Ista, in Paladin of Souls.

[GA Russell]

Welcome to MR carmenchu! The Charlie Chan and JG Reader books are available here in the MR library (as I recall, lovingly prepared by Harry). Take a look at the library to see all that it has to offer!

[hedwig]

This is a great thread.
I absolutely love mysteries and thrillers and am always looking for new authors so this thread will definitely prove to be a gold mine.
My favorites from childhood are Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and The Three Investigators (they got me hooked).
I progressed to Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Marple and Poirot, and now I am a big fan of Tess Gerritsen's Jane Rizzoli and Lisa Gardner's Quincy series (don't really enjoy the D.D.Warren ones).

[NNolan]

Nine pages of mystery writer recommendations and not one mention of Val McDermid? I particularly like her Tony Hill books and the BBC series that came out of them, "Wire in the Blood", is some of the best tv you'll ever watch (assuming anyone here ever takes a break from reading to watch tv).

[DMcCunney]

I'll add a few more I don't think have been mentioned thus far.

I like offbeat police procedurals in exotic settings.

One is the Tromp Kramer and Mickey Zondi books by James McLure. Kramer is Lt. Tromp Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad in Trekkersburg, SA, and Zondi is Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi, Kramer's partner. Aside from being good police procedurals, they are ironic commentary on the Apartheid policies of older South Africa, as the motivations for the crimes tend to be rooted in Apartheid. In one book, for instance, the critical factor is that a character is "passing for white", and has a Negro ancestor. If this were to become public, the character would be reclassified from White to Coloured, with catastrophic results for the character.

Another is the Yellowthread Street mysteries by William Marshall, set in the fictitious Hong Bay district of Hong Kong. Detective Chief Inspector Harry Pfieffer and his crew at the Yellowthread Street police station must cope with a variety of unusual situations. In _Sci-Fi_, for example, promoters are holding an SF and comics convention, so the Yellowthread Street cops must cope with costumed loonies along with the normal variety. And the promoters have set up a giant inflated Godzilla doll as a promotional device. Unfortunately, its broken loose from its moorings and is drifting toward mainland China. Everyone is very concerned about how the Communist government will react to the violation of their airspace. Morrison is capable of going from slapstick comedy to stark terror in the space of a page.

For something a bit different, there are the Lord Darcy stories by the late Randall Garrett. These sit on the border between science fiction and fantasy. They are set in an alternate history in which King Richard the Lion Hearted settled down after being wounded in the Crusades to become a very good King indeed, founding a Plantagent dynasty that still exists. Magic has been developed instead of science. Darcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for his Grace, the Duke of Rouen, who investigates with his partner, Master Forensic Sorcerer Sean O'Lochlain, who uses magic to unearth clues Darcy will use to solve the case.

The Lord Darcy tales are available in ebook format from Baen's Webscriptions programs. I don't know offhand about the others.
______
Dennis

[Catlady]

Cherry Ames, Vicki Barr, Connie Blair, and Judy Bolton!

I like Chris Bennett (Lee Harris), Monk and Pitt (Anne Perry), Agnes Carmichael (Anthea Cohen), Sarah Brandt (Victoria Thompson), and Ellery Queen.

[mikemc2]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'll add a few more I don't think have been mentioned thus far.

I like offbeat police procedurals in exotic settings.



Another is the Yellowthread Street mysteries by William Morrison, set in the fictitious Hong Bay district of Hong Kong. Detective Chief Inspector Harry Pfieffer and his crew at the Yellowthread Street police station must cope with a variety of unusual situations. In _Sci-Fi_, for example, promoters are holding an SF and comics convention, so the Yellowthread Street cops must cope with costumed loonies along with the normal variety. And the promoters have set up a giant inflated Godzilla doll as a promotional device. Unfortunately, its broken loose from its moorings and is drifting toward mainland China. Everyone is very concerned about how the Communist government will react to the violation of their airspace. Morrison is capable of going from slapstick comedy to stark terror in the space of a page.
______
Dennis

Couldn't find the Yellowthread Street books on AMZN, turns out they're by William Marshall.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by mikemc2

Couldn't find the Yellowthread Street books on AMZN, turns out they're by William Marshall.

Arrgghhh!

So much for my memory, and I didn't even celebrate all that hard on New Years.

Fixed in the original post. Thanks for the correction.
______
Dennis

[jgray]

Originally Posted by Joebill

Sherlock Holmes. Miss Marple.

My two favorites as well.

Joe

[arethusa2]

Nancy Drew, Sarah Brandt, & Molly Murphy

[amward]

So many so many: Dalziel and Pascoe, Inspector Linley, all of Agatha Christie's sleuths, Inspector Rebus, Sophie Hannah's female inspector whose name I can't remember, etc etc.

[wsbutler]

Adjutant-Detective Henk Grijpstra and Detective-Sergeant Rinus de Gier, by Janwillem van de Wetering. The author had an interesting history also.