Wow.
- Nobody has mentioned either Poirot or Marple, from Dame Agatha Christie. !!! Zoiks!
- Or the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe series (lovely, like popcorn!).
- Or the Lord Peter Wimseys, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Sheesh, folks.
- What about Dick Francis' fantastic mysteries, with various characters, all centered around horses/horse racing? Not really a series, although he has some reoccurring characters, but near-as.
- SPENSER, from the late Robert B. Parker (granted, they fall off the last few years, in quality, but there are dozens of great ones).
- John Sandford's Lucas Davenport and his Kidd series.
- Robert Crais' detective series, (similar conceptually to Spenser with Hawk), with Pike and Elvis Cole);
- Tony Hillerman's series, with Inspector Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee;
- James Lee Burke and the Dave Robicheaux series.
- Lighter fare, (QUITE A LOT LIGHTER), the Stephanie Plum bounty hunter series; the first few books are hysterically funny. Gets a bit repetitive, eventually, but there's a scene in the first book that made me laugh aloud, and that's not easy to do.
- Bonnie McBird's Holmesian pastiches, 3 books so far (or maybe it's four).
- Longmire, a lovely series, by Craig Johnson (again, a bit in the Spenser vein; do-right lawman of large size with large male companion, much wise-cracking and do-righting involved in Wyoming. As I have a place in WYO, I really enjoy a lot of it. Actually, I pretty much love all those books. He can also make me laugh aloud, on occasion--he writes some gorgeous lines, that you just have to admire as a master of his craft.
- Skip Langdon series, (New Orleans lady cop), by Julie Smith (disclosure, she's a client).
- I think someone already mentioned Liz Chen's supernatural series; quite fun but be warned, it "ends" on a cliffhangar, because her idiot publisher wouldn't do the last book AND she refuses to self-publish, which torques me no end.
- Barry Eisler's Rain series.
- Thomas Perry's Jane Whitefield stories. Highly recommended.
- What list would be complete with Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitts? While they get a bit silly after a while, some rather fun adventures, in the first however-many.
- Time Hallinan's Poke Rafferty series. (disclosure, client).
- And last but not least, of course, Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhones, starting with A is for Alibi. Unlike Archie and Wolfe (Rex Stout), Kinsey's time period never really changes. She doesn't end up with computers and smartphones and all that; I believe she's stuck in the early 80's, or thereabouts. After a while, that was offputting for me, but overall, still a very worthwhile series.
Without knowing what you like, I defaulted to Mystery, but many of the great Sci-Fi series (other than the ORIGINAL Dune; run like Usain Bolt from the retread "prequels" and "sequels" from his kid) have been covered here. There are some fun supernatural mysteries or whatever; I see someone of course mentioned Harry Dresden, and the author's five-year-long dry spell has (finally) come to an end, so you might enjoy those.
So...any hints as to what you want, my shelves overflow with bingy series of all sorts. SciFi, Fantasy, urban fantasy...I tend to gravitate toward series so that I can have a period of time where I enjoy something and don't want to throw it at the wall and waste my money, ha!
Hitch