AmongReaders.com Add a tiny library
📚 AmongReaders — track what you read, talk chapter by chapter without spoilers, and read with friends. Free.Join AmongReadersSign in

🧲 Books like this

Ratking

Michael Dibdin · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Keeper of Lost Causes

Jussi Adler-Olsen · 396 pages

Chief detective Carl Mørck, recovering from what he thought was a career-destroying gunshot wound, is relegated to cold cases and becomes immersed in the five-year disappearance of a politician.

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionKidnapping PlotMystery
❤️

When the Bough Breaks

Jonathan Kellerman · 448 pages

***In the first Alex Delaware novel, Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation.*** Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have ***one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.*** It's psychologist Dr.

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionKidnapping PlotCrime
❤️

U Is for Undertow

Sue Grafton · 403 pages

Calling T is for Trespass "taut, terrifying, transfixing and terrific," USA Today went on to ask, "What does it take to write twenty novels about the same character and manage to create a fresh, genre-bending novel every time?" It's a question worth pondering. Through twenty excursions into the dark side of the human soul, Sue Grafton has never written the same book twice. And so it is with this,

Kidnapping PlotDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistCrime
❤️

Stranger In Paradise

Robert B. Parker · 293 pages

Police Chief Jesse Stone faces his most fearsome adversary in the latest addition to the celebrated series.The last time Jesse Stone, chief of police of Paradise, Massachusetts, saw Wilson "Crow" Cromartie, the Apache Indian hit man was racing away in a speedboat after executing one of the most lucrative and deadly heists in the town's history. Crow was part of a team of ex-cons who plotted to cap

Kidnapping PlotDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
❤️

The Late-night News

Petros Markaris · 288 pages

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrimeMystery
❤️

Worst Case

James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge · 386 pages

Best case: survivalThe son of one of New York's wealthiest families is snatched off the street and held hostage. His parents can't save him, because this kidnapper isn't demanding money. Instead, he quizzes his prisoner on the price others pay for his life of luxury. In this exam, wrong answers are fatal.Worst case: deathDetective Michael Bennett leads the investigation. With ten kids of his own,

Kidnapping PlotDetective ProtagonistRansom DemandCrime
❤️

Gorky Park

Martin Cruz Smith · 384 pages

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI and New York police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fu

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionMysteryCrime
❤️

The Shape of Water

Andrea Camilleri · 224 pages

Follows Sicilian detective Inspector Montalbano as he investigates the suspicious death of an engineer who had made a name for himself in a small town.

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrimeMystery
❤️

In a Dark House

Deborah Crombie · 383 pages

An abandoned Southwark warehouse burns next door to a women's shelter for victims of spousal abuse. Within it lies the charred corpse of a female body burned beyond all recognition. At the same time, workers at Guy's Hospital anxiously discuss the disappearance of a hospital administrator -- a beautiful, emotionally fragile young woman who's vanished without a trace.And in an old, dark, rambling L

Detective ProtagonistKidnapping PlotDetective FictionCrime
❤️

The Last Detective

Robert Crais · 302 pages

Elvis Cole is back...With his acclaimed bestsellers, *Hostage* (a New York Times Notable Book) and *Demolition Angel*, Robert Crais drew raves for his unstoppable pacing, edgy characterizations, and cinematic prose. Now, in *The Last Detective*, Crais returns to his signature character, Los Angeles private investigator Elvis Cole, in a masterful page-turner that probes the meaning of family and t

Detective ProtagonistKidnapping PlotDetective FictionCrime
❤️

Along Came a Spider

James Patterson · 462 pages

A missing little girl named Maggie Rose.A family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C.The thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher.A psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who calls himself the Son of Lindbergh. He is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him - even after he's been captured. Gary Soneji is a mild-mann

Detective ProtagonistKidnapping PlotRansom DemandMystery
❤️

The Skull Mantra

Eliot Pattison · 406 pages

When a headless corpse is found on a remote Tibetan mountainside, veteran inspector Shan Tao Yun is the perfect candidate to solve the crime--except he's been stripped of rank and imprisoned in the gulag for offending the Party in Beijing. Desperate to close the case before the arrival of high-profile American tourists, the district commander grants Shan a temporary release.

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistCrimeMystery
❤️

The Empty Chair

Jeffery Deaver · 444 pages

Reowned criminalist Lincoln Rhyme is pitted against Amelia Sachs, his own brilliant protegee, as they disagree on the analysis of a crime they began working together.

Kidnapping PlotDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistMystery
❤️

Nine Dragons

Michael Connelly · 377 pages

Kidnapping PlotDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
❤️

Harm Done

Ruth Rendell · 368 pages

In Britain, a pedophile's house is burned by an angry mob when a girl disappears, the man having been recently released from jail. But Inspector Wexford is not swayed by the obvious and traces the disappearance to the girl's home and her abusive father.

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionKidnapping PlotMystery
❤️

Déjà Dead

Kathy Reichs · 509 pages

Un beau jour d'été à Montréal, sur la table de dissection du laboratoire de médecine légale de la police provinciale, arrive un cadavre découvert dans l'ancien parc du Grand Séminaire. Le docteur Temperance Brennan est chargé d'autopsier ce qu'il reste d'une femme découpée en morceaux. Sa sinistre expertise va l'amener en première ligne de l'enquête, face à l'assassin pervers qui collectionne les

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistKidnapping PlotMystery
❤️

The House of Dolls

David Hewson · 448 pages

Kidnapping PlotDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionMystery
❤️

The Child Taker

Conrad Jones

Kidnapping PlotDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
❤️

The Hard Way

Lee Child · 512 pages

In Lee Child's astonishing new thriller, ex--military cop Reacher sees more than most people would...and because of that, he's thrust into an explosive situation that's about to blow up in his face. For the only way to find the truth--and save two innocent lives--is to do it the way Jack Reacher does it best: the hard way.... Jack Reacher was alone, the way he liked it, soaking up the hot, electri

Kidnapping PlotDetective FictionCrimeRansom Demand
❤️

The Final Deduction

Rex Stout · 144 pages

Mrs. Vail's husband has been kidnapped. She doesn't want to hire Nero Wolfe to find him, just to make sure that his kidnappers don't kill him. When he returns safely, but her secretary is killed, Nero Wolfe is drawn reluctantly into the investigation.

Detective ProtagonistKidnapping PlotDetective FictionRansom Demand
❤️

An Accidental Death

Peter Grainger

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionMysteryCrime
❤️

First Frost

James Henry · 400 pages

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionMysteryCrime
❤️

Off Minor

John Harvey · 336 pages

Kidnapping PlotDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrime
❤️

Entanglement

Zygmunt Miloszewski · 295 pages

The morning after a grueling psychotherapy session in a Warsaw monastery, Henryk Telak is found dead. World-weary State Prosecutor Teodor Szacki feels that life has passed him by, but this case changes everything. His search for the killer unearths another murder that took place twenty years earlier-- and to facts that, for his own safety, he'd be better off not knowing.

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionCrimeMystery
📖 New 2026 Kindles just released. See them on Amazon ↗