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John Dickson Carr / Carter Dickson, locked rooms and impossible crimes.
Arthur Upfield, "Bony" series, the outback detective.
Also by Ellis Peters, the Insp. George Felse series, contemporary rather than historical.
Maigret, by Georges Simenon. These are quite short, usually slightly shorter than a Perry Mason, ie about 40-45,000 words. One of them is very amusing, a book in which Maigret himself writes about his meeting with author Simenon, showijg how Simenon simplifies things and gets it all wrong, (he doesn't wear bowler!), has Maigret working for the Surete in one book, and the Paris metropolitan police in the next, and so on. Actually quite clever, too.
More modern series: Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano series, located in Sicily; Michael Dibdin's series featuring Aurelio Zen, an Italian cop forever being shunted out of Rome to remote places, even as far as Sardinia.
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