The classic murder mystery. Now that’s a relaxing way to quickly tick away the time as you escape to intrigue, danger, and suspense on that next long flight. We searched high and low for some good reading material where it WASN’T the butler.
All of these can be found on Amazon with the longer synopsis and most can be downloaded on Kindle.
A Coffin For Dimitrios
– Eric Ambler
This is the classic story of an ordinary man seemingly out of his depth in Ambler’s most widely acclaimed novel.
This tells the tale of a chance encounter with a Turkish colonel which leads Charles Latimer, the author of a handful of successful murder mysteries, into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers.
At first, Latimer is merely curious to reconstruct the career of the notorious Dimitrios – body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue.
But Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and treachery that spans the Balkans.
“One of the masterpieces of the genre” (The New York Times Book Review).
The Maltese Falcon
– Dashiell Hammett
Ahh, a good ‘ol fashioned murder mystery in the old-timey days.
This might just be the greatest hardboiled detective novel ever published. Immensely influential, immensely entertaining, and excellently written, it is both a rollicking example of the genre.
True Confessions
– John Gregory Dunne and George P. Pelecanos
In 1940s Los Angeles, an unidentified murder victim is found bisected in a shadowy lot. A catchy nickname is given to her in jest—”The Virgin Tramp”—and suddenly a nice little homicide that would have drifted off the front pages in a couple of days becomes a storm. Now we got ourselves a murder mystery!
Two brothers, Tom and Des Spellacy are at the heart of this powerful novel of Irish-Catholic life in Southern California. It takes place just after World War II.
Played in the film version by Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro respectively, Tom is a homicide detective and Des is a priest on the rise within the Church.
The murder investigation provides the background against which are played the ever-changing loyalties of the two brothers.
Downward Cycle
– JK Franks
We love those dystopian “what if” scenarios and this is the first book of a trilogy that doesn’t disappoint. A super solar-storm hits Earth—and everything changes.
In a remote oceanfront town, life begins to spiral downward after the storm causes a global electrical blackout.
As planes begin falling from the sky, Scott Montgomery watches helplessly as pandemonium consumes the world around him.
But the loss of electrical power is just the first of the problems facing the survivors in the chaos that follows.
Catalyst is a shockingly realistic and largely fact-based tale about how society copes when the world is thrust back to a time before technology.
Hopefully, our hero Scott Montgomery read our post about the best days to book a room before this all went down, sounds like this remote town ain’t gonna cut it when the lights go out!
The Whistler
– John Grisham
You can’t go wrong with master storyteller John Grisham.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. What happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe?
Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. It is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct.
After nine years with the Board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption.
But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined.
And not just crooked judges in Florida. All judges, from all states, and throughout United States history. And now he wants to put a stop to it. That’s a lot of turf to cover, I hope he travels as our celebrities do!
A Simple Plan
– Scott Smith
This was a novel adapted into film with Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe. The acting was so incredible the film’s as good as the book.
