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The Patriarch

Martin Walker · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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The Long Way Home

Louise Penny · 392 pages

At first enjoying a peaceful retirement, former Quebec homicide detective Armand Gamache reluctantly agrees to help a neighbor search for her missing estranged husband and teams up with two former colleagues on a search that reveals the workings of a psychologically damaged mind.

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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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 FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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Not in the Flesh

Ruth Rendell · 303 pages

A new Chief Inspector Wexford mystery from the author who Time magazine has called "the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world." When the truffle-hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master's first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed: at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a pre

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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Dry Bones

Craig Johnson · 365 pages

Wyoming's beloved lawman must solve his coldest case yet when a T. rex skeleton surfaces--along with a dead rancher--in Absaroka County.

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionAtmosphericSmall Town
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The Deer Leap

Martha Grimes · 236 pages

When a series of accidents befalls both animals and humans in the village of Ashdown Dean Superintendent Richard Jury, his aristocratic assistant, Melrose Plant, the local police and a fifteen-year-old animal lover join the search for the murderer.

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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Unnatural Causes

P.D. James · 236 pages

Maurice Seton was a famous mystery writer—but no murder he ever invented was more grisly than his own death. When his corpse is found in a drifting dinghy with both hands chopped off at the wrists, ripples of horror spread among his bizarre circle of friends. Now it’s up to brilliant Scotland Yard inspector, Adam Dalgliesh, and his extraordinary aunt to uncover the shocking truth behind the writer

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericSmall Town
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Rupture

Ragnar Jonasson · 272 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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A Long Shadow

Charles Todd · 341 pages

In 1919, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge finds himself the target of a mysterious person who is leaving oddly engraved cartridge casings around that seem to point to unfinished business involving the Great War.

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericSmall Town
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The Hanging Valley

Peter Robinson · 324 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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Death in Brittany

Jean-Luc Bannalec · 318 pages

"Commissaire Georges Dupin, a Parisian-born caffeine junkie recently relocated from the glamour of Paris to the remote (if picturesque) Breton coast, is not happy when he is dragged from his morning croissant and coffee to the scene of a curious murder. The local village of Pont-Aven--a sleepy community by the sea where everyone knows one other and nothing much seems to happen--is in shock. The le

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericSmall Town
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Dry Bones in the Valley

Tom Bouman · 288 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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Don't Look Back

Karin Fossum · 292 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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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

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericSmall Town
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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

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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The Messenger of Athens

Anne Zouroudi · 324 pages

After the battered body of a woman is found on the Greek island of Thiminos, Athenian investigator Hermes Diaktoros inexplicably shows up to prove that the death was not an accident and find the killer. But Hermes brings mysteries of his own to this tiny, remote island.

Detective ProtagonistDetective FictionAtmosphericSmall Town
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High Force

L.J. Ross

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericSmall Town
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Whisky from Small Glasses

Denzil Meyrick, D.A. Meyrick · 368 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericMystery
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Closed for Winter

Jorn Lier Horst · 364 pages

"Ove Bakkerud, newly separated and extremely disillusioned, is looking forward to a final quiet weekend at his summer home before closing for winter but, when the tourists leave, less welcome visitors arrive. Bakkerud's cottage is ransacked by burglars. Next door he discovers the body of a man who has been beaten to death. Police Inspector William Wisting has witnessed grotesque murders before, bu

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericMystery
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End Games

Michael Dibdin · 443 pages

Italian Policeman Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. Beneath the surface of a tight-knit, traditional community he discovers that violent forces are at work. There has been a brutal murder. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth. But his mission is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericMystery
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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

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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The Last Party

Clare Mackintosh · 432 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistSmall TownAtmospheric
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Kissed a Sad Goodbye

Deborah Crombie · 440 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericMystery
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Dying to Sin

Stephen Booth · 394 pages

Detective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmosphericMystery
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