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Dry Bones in the Valley

Tom Bouman · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Last Party

Clare Mackintosh · 432 pages

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
❤️

Snow White Must Die

Nele Neuhaus · 491 pages

On a rainy November day police detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to a mysterious traffic accident: a woman has fallen from a pedestrian bridge onto a car driving underneath. According to a witness, the woman may have been pushed. The investigation leads Pia and Oliver to a small village, and the home of the victim, Rita Cramer. On a September evening eleven years earl

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
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A Fatal Grace

Louise Penny · 320 pages

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionSmall Town
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The Dark Lake

Sarah Bailey · 384 pages

The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind's student years and then again when she returned to teach drama. As mu

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
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The Dry

Jane Harper · 328 pages

"A small town hides big secrets in The Dry. After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke's steadfast claim

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericCrime
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A Grain of Truth

Zygmunt Miloszewski · 380 pages

It is spring 2009, and prosecutor Teodor Szacki is no longer working in Warsaw--he has said goodbye to his family and to his career in the capital and moved to Sandomierz, a picturesque town full of churches and museums. Hoping to start a "brave new life," Szacki instead finds himself investigating a strange murder case in surroundings both alien and unfriendly. The victim is found brutally murder

Small Town SecretsDetective FictionCrimeDetective Protagonist
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The Moth Catcher

Ann Cleeves · 400 pages

"Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter to look after the place while they're away. But he is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley. DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene with her detectives Holly and Joe. When they look round the attic of the

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
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Broadchurch

Erin Kelly, Chris Chibnall

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
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Dark of the Moon

John Sandford · 392 pages

Virgil Flowers-tall, lean, late thirties, three times divorced, hair way too long for a cop's-had kicked around for a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First, it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport had brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff."He'd been doing the hard st

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
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Bad Little Falls

Paul Doiron · 320 pages

Summoned to a rustic cabin during a blizzard, Maine game warden Mike Bowdich embarks on a dangerous investigation involving a notorious drug dealer, a beautiful woman with a dark past, and her troubled young son.

Small Town SecretsCrimeSubstance AbuseAtmospheric
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The Keeper

Tana French · 528 pages

Small Town SecretsCrimeRural FarmAtmospheric
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The Preacher

Camilla Lackberg · 419 pages

The discovery of two murder victims who were killed twenty years earlier is complicated by the body of a third, recent victim at the same location, a case that compels detective Patrik Hedstrom to investigate a feuding clan of misfits, religious fanatics, and criminals.

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
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The Blackhouse

Peter May · 501 pages

When a grisly murder occurs on the Isle of Lewis with the hallmarks of a killing he's investigating on the mainland, Edinburgh detective and native islander Fin MacLeod is dispatched to see if the two deaths are connected. His return after nearly two decades not only represents a police investigation, but a voyage into his troubled past. Every step in solving the murder takes him closer to a dange

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistCrimeDetective Fiction
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The Hanging Valley

Peter Robinson · 324 pages

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionAtmospheric
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Don't Look Back

Karin Fossum · 292 pages

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionSmall Town
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Crime on the Fens

Joy Ellis · 284 pages

Detective ProtagonistCrimeDetective FictionSubstance Abuse
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Scared to Live

Stephen Booth · 419 pages

With One Last Breath and The Dead Place, Stephen Booth has taken his place both among "the elite British crime writers" and as a master of psychological suspense. Now Detective Constable Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry must uncover the secrets of two grim murder scenes in England's Peak District--one inexplicable...and the other unspeakable.How do you investigate the murder of a woman

Small Town SecretsCrimeDetective ProtagonistDetective Fiction
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The Ghost Riders of Ordebec

Fred Vargas · 361 pages

"As the chief of police in Paris's seventh arrondissement, Commissaire Adamsberg has no jurisdiction in Ordebec. Yet, he cannot ignore a widow's plea. Her daughter Lina has seen a vision of the Ghost Riders with four nefarious men. According to the thousand-year-old legend, the vision means that the men will soon die a grisly death. When one of them disappears, Adamsberg races to Ordebec, where he

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionAtmospheric
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A Beautiful Place to Die

Malla Nunn · 399 pages

Cooper is dispatched to Jacob's Rest, a remote town deep in the bush, to look into a murder report. Arriving at Old Voster's farm, he finds the white police captain dead face down in a creek. Three of the Afrikaner's sons are present at the scene. Trouble comes when another son, a member of the feared Special Branch, arrives.

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
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Forty Words for Sorrow

Giles Blunt · 378 pages

In the quiet Canadian town of Algonquin Bay, a frozen body has been found in an abandoned mine shaft. She is quickly identified as Katie Pine, a teenager who had disappeared months ago. At the time, Detective John Cardinal insisted that Katie was no ordinary runaway. His relentless pursuit and refusal to give up on the case got him demoted from Homicide. But now the Canadian police force wants Car

Detective ProtagonistCrimeDetective FictionSmall Town
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The Snowman

Jo Nesbo · 550 pages

"In Oslo, after the first snow of the season has fallen, a woman disappears, and a sinister snowman is left in her wake. As irascible detective Harry Hole realizes that this is only one of multiple disappearances, he begins to think a serial killer may be at work--and may be drawing in Hole personally and intentionally"--

Detective ProtagonistSubstance AbuseCrimeDetective Fiction
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The Long Goodbye

Raymond Chandler · 324 pages

In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe befriends a down on his luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Terry Lennox has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife, whom he divorced and remarried and who ends up dead. And now Lennox is on the lam and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Marlowe.

Detective ProtagonistAtmosphericSubstance AbuseDetective Fiction
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We Begin at the End

Chris Whitaker · 400 pages

There are two kinds of families: the ones we are born into and the ones we create. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. Duchess is a

CrimeRural FarmSubstance AbuseDetective Protagonist
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Murder at Holly House

Denzil Meyrick · 410 pages

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionSmall Town

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