Discover Mystery Authors

Many fine writers have earned a wide audience. For each writer that has name recognition, there are many more terrific mystery writers whose names are not on the NY Time's list, but deserve to be on a mystery reader's list. Here is a small sampling of authors I have enjoyed over the years. If any of these teasers interest you, click the link to read a HubPage with more detail on the author and books. Who are your favorite mystery authors who deserve wider recognition? I'd like to hear your comments below.

Take an idiosyncratic police Inspector, surround him with quirky good guys and bad guys, place them in a funny yet sad Sicily, add Camilleri's way with words and out come an engaging Montalbano mystery. That would be Salvo Montalbano, the Sicilian Inspector created by Andrea Camilleri in Italian, sprinkled with Sicilian dialect.

Discover Andrea Camilleri here...

Harold Adams is one of those writers who are able to create a sense of time and place with a few words. His stories are placed in South Dakota in the 1930's. His protagonist is a drifter just trying to survive but who makes an impact at the end of the day. Adams' spare books let the story and characters blow the dust over you; make you weary with the day's effort; and somehow lets the hopefulness of the human spirit leak through.

Discover Harold Adams here...

In his Key West series, Shames typically takes a person displaced from "up North", has him drift into Key West to find a new life. That new life may involve a dead body or two, some unusual characters and results in a lot of reader smiling. The stories are fun to read, but what really appeals to me is Shames' writing style. Shames uses the simile liberally and artfully to bring Key West and his characters to the reader. His words carom through the paragraphs like clever balls in a pinball machine; scoring jackpots of vivid description and bonus smiles of recognition.

Discover Laurence Shames here...

The Commissario Brunetti series is sometimes a police procedural, sometimes a whodunit, sometimes a comic opera, and occasionally plays like "Father does not know best". Guido Brunetti has a good life in Venice. While being a police official there makes him cynical, his soul won't allow him to quit. Donna Leon writes the life of a man that you would like to know and spend time with. He is a perfect series character, and this is a great series. If you can't travel to Venice, this series is a very good trip for the mind.

Discover Donna Leon...

The mark of a good suspense writer is not only the ability to write a great yarn, but the ability to keep the pace and focus on what's happening now. That makes a page-turner. Lee Child writes page-turners with the best of them. Lee Child writes about Jack Reacher, a larger than life hero. When you go up against the bad guys, you want Reacher on your side.

Discover Lee Child...

Jon Jackson's detective series is known as the Detective Sergeant Fang Mulheisen series. I see at as three interwoven series: some feature Mulheisen, some feature Grootka, and some feature Service. Jon Jackson is an interesting guy: a writer; a teacher of writing; an ax fan (that's a sax max); a cigar aficionado; an angler; a Detroit guy, gone Montanan.

Discover Jon A. Jackson...

It's easy to create a HubPage where you can explore a topic, stake a position, share a discovery, or just rant. Everybody's an expert on something!

Join here. I'm anxious to read your HubPage!