Detective Novels with a Twist

“The essence of a mystery tale is that we are
suddenly confronted with a truth which we have
never suspected and yet can see to be true.
…The ideal detective story might bring us to
understand that the world is not all curves,
but that there are some things that are
as jagged as the lightning-flash
or as straight as the sword.”
~G.K. Chesterton

“The detective story is a small celebration
of reason and order in our very disorderly world.”
~P.D. James

Confession: I’m a big fan of detective fiction in all its forms, from the hardboiled noir stories of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler to the classics of the so-called Golden Age—Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh et al.—to the “alphabet” mysteries (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar etc.) of Sue Grafton and the enigmatic Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh series by the inimitable P.D. James. But I further confess that I’m especially partial to those detective novels that have such an unusual angle of theme or setting or character that they are particularly noteworthy for other reasons, and likely to resonate in parts of us beyond the puzzle-solving mind.

Julia Spencer-Fleming has written eight (so far) novels in a series taking their titles from hymns or the liturgy (starting with In the Bleak Midwinter), all featuring an unlikely pair of detectives: the woman Episcopal priest and veteran Army combat helicopter pilot Clare Fergusson and small town police chief Russ van Alstyne. In addition to clever plots and characters, the books treat with real insight themes of love and faith, vocation and family, treachery and fidelity, community and individualism.

Zoo Station by David Downing inaugurates a whole series of spy thrillers set in Berlin in the 1930s. The titles all refer to Berlin’s historic train stations: could be cross-referenced with books about war. Poignant evocation of a vanished world and the gathering clouds of war, from the perspective of Germany rather than Britain.

In Alias Grace (prison conditions for women in 19th century England), Margaret Atwood has woven a complex fictional web around an historical character, Grace Marks, a young Irish maidservant convicted of the murder of her Canadian employers in 1843. Grace spent more than 30 years in prisons and insane asylums, always insisting that she had no memory of the events in question. Not just an unflinching look at conditions in those institutions but a fascinating study of the then-nascent psychology of memory, truth, and self-deception.  

Celine by Peter Heller is a remarkable literary feat: Heller has created a new and unexpected heroine, a totally charming completely improbable aging private investigator at the top of her game (apparently modeled on Heller’s own mother)—and creates her so persuasively that I kept thinking there was a whole previously published series of her adventures that I had inexplicably missed. I actually Googled this to be sure; I am sorry there are not more of Celine’s adventures. But more than a literary investigative tour de force, Celine is all about the long secret grief of lost and missing children, and the longing for recovery and reunion.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey is a clever historical bit of detection: Tey’s famous sleuth Alan Grant is immobilized by a broken leg, and bored to distraction. Led by his fascination with human faces and his ability to “read” them he becomes intrigued by a postcard a friend gives him, of a portrait of King Richard III. That kind and thoughtful visage couldn’t really be, could it, the face of a man who murdered his young nephews, the princes in the Tower? Researching the question beguiles Grant’s convalescence. Apparently this account of a long-dead king’s vindication, Tey’s last book before her death, led to the formation of a society to restore a more balanced view of Richard, a group who helped fund the excavation of Richard’s bones, found under a parking lot in Leicester in 2015.

The chilling twist in Farthing (followed by Half a Crown and Ha’penny) by Jo Walton is imagining that Hitler won World War II, and that post-war England is now a fascist state: this darkly romantic alternate history is both a political thriller and a disturbing exploration of how a culture can slip incrementally into an accommodation of evil.

Deborah Crombie’s investigative team of Scotland Yard detective Duncan Kincaid and his sergeant Gemma James is one of the most appealing and complicated in the whole genre, and the books (A Share in Death, All Shall Be Well, Garden of Lamentations, No Mark upon Her, etc.) in this (deliciously long) series just get better and better. Best read in order, to be able to follow the development of the characters and their relationships. Beginning as traditional “English” mysteries (though Crombie hails from Texas), the books come to treat with skill, depth, and compassion social issues of the abuse and exploitation of women and children, the tendency toward corruption within powerful institutions, the enduring legacy of both trauma and love.

Jacqueline Winspear created the eponymous character Maisie Dobbs in the first novel in this series, which has now run to fifteen books. We meet Maisie as a housemaid with a thirst for learning, then as a young Army nurse in a field hospital in France in World War I; we follow her journey through that war, in and out of love, to Spain to nurse the wounded in the civil war, and into the next war as she becomes both an intuitive private investigator and psychologist. This series too just gets better and better, full of historical and political detail, complex characters, dense plots. And above all, there is Maisie herself: smart, strong, wounded, brave.

Tony Hillerman’s series of novels featuring the Navajo tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee (Dance Hall of the Dead and The Blessing Way are among my favorites) are both excellent mysteries in themselves and an extended homage to the Navajo people whose culture and character Hillerman so deeply admired, and the wild beauty of the landscapes of the Southwest that he called home. Of the many awards Hillerman received in his life for his fiction, the one that meant the most to him came from the Navajo Nation, which named him a Special Friend of the Dineh in 1987 “as an expression of appreciation and friendship for authentically portraying the strength and dignity of the traditional Navajo culture.” In the course of the eighteen books chronicling the detective work of Leaphorn and Chee, much is revealed about the tensions between the ancient ways, the modern world, and the good and evil in all of us.

Tony Hillerman’s daughter Anne Hillerman picked up the torch after her father’s death, delightfully continuing the series with her own bestselling novels (The Tale Teller, Spider Woman’s Daughter, Song of the Lion, Cave of Bones), keeping the beloved Chee and Leaphorn alive and active, and bringing a heretofore minor character, officer Bernadette Manuelito, wonderfully to the fore.

Margaret Coel’s detective novels (The Eagle Catcher, The Ghost Walker, The Dream Stalker, The Story Teller etc., twenty titles in all) set in the Wind River Wilderness and among the Arapaho people of Wyoming also features a Native American sleuth in the person of the lovely whip-smart Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden, who joins forces with the Boston-bred Jesuit priest Father John O’Malley at the reservation’s mission to solve crimes. Reminiscent of the Hillerman books but not derivative, this team stands alone (and high) in the annals of crime fiction, and the respectful and nuanced explorations of character, plot, politics and traditional Native culture all Coel’s own. Coel, like the Hillerman father and daughter among the Navajo, has been honored by the Arapaho people for her understanding of Native culture and history. (She is also the author of the acclaimed Chief Left Hand, a scholarly biography of the legendary Arapaho chief who fought for peace between the Plains Indians and the white men who exploited the West and its indigenous peoples, men who were responsible for the infamous Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people—mostly women and children—in the Colorado Territory in 1864.)

The prolific Zimbabwe-born Scottish academic and writer Alexander McCall Smith is probably best known and best-loved for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series stars Mma Ramotswe, the incomparable Botswana sleuth whose good manners, common sense and sharp instincts lead to the solution of many crimes—and introduce a great deal of Botswana history and culture. His other series, The Sunday Philosophy Club, featuring Isabel Dalhousie, Scottish academic philosopher and amateur detective, is also charming.

Charles Todd is a pen name used by a mother-and-son writing team (Charles and Caroline Todd), who have now written more than twenty novels featuring the Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge, beginning in 1996 with A Test of Wills. The “twist” in this memorable series is that Rutledge is a shell-shocked Army officer, veteran of trench warfare in France, returning to Britain devastated in mind and spirit. He is quite literally haunted by the ever-present mocking voice of Hamish McLeod, a Scottish soldier under his command whom Rutledge was forced to execute for desertion. As Rutledge very slowly makes his peace with Hamish and with his own tormented memories, he also realizes that nearly all the cases he is called upon to solve have their bitter roots in war. One comes to see that wars don’t really end, that unresolved conflict just rages underground, like seams of coal buried in the earth that smolder unseen.

Louise Penny has created a memorable detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, a kind and wise man with a keen mind and a magical small town, Three Pines. The first few in this series, Still Life et seq., may seem slow-burning, but are important for setting the stage and introducing the characters. The pace picks up in later volumes: perseverance will be rewarded. The whole series is superb, and gains in strength and complexity as it goes along. Gamache deals with all kinds of treachery and conflict: in the cases he must try to solve, in the police force itself, in his family. Without moralizing, the books celebrate humility as much as keen intelligence, integrity more than political ambition.

The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison is a hauntingly atmospheric thriller: Tibetan Buddhists of the High Himalayas are threatened by China’s brutal policies. Death and life, faith and sacrifice, and mysterious powers are uncovered by Chinese inspector Shan Tao Yun. This prize-winning debut novel by international lawyer and journalist Eliot Pattison is the first in a series about Tibet and Inspector Shan Tao Yun.

In The Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotterill we meet Dr. Siri Paiboun, a seventy-two-year old medical doctor pressed into service by the new nation of Laos to be national coroner: he connects with the Hmong shaman tradition in surprising ways, and is haunted—and assisted—by the spirits of the dead as he brings to justice those responsible for their deaths.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson is an historical account that reads like a thriller, telling how a determined physician and parish priest teamed up to discover how cholera was spread in London’s 19th century slums. Their findings initiated both epidemiology and public health when they put a lock on the pump of the contaminated well that distributed disease-bearing water. As un-put-down-able as the best crime fiction, and an inspiring piece of true-life detection.

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey is the first installment of a series set in 1920s Bombay, introducing Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a Zoroastrian family, who just joined her father’s law firm. The multicultural diversity in the teeming city—with Hindus, Muslims, and Zoroastrians living with British Raj officials in their midst—makes solving crime especially challenging—and fascinating. The prejudice against women attorneys nearly a century ago plays a role, as does the stifling reality of women living in the strict seclusion of full purdah, as well as the strong family bonds of affection, courage and loyalty in the Mistry household.

In a similar way but very different setting, the Flavia Albia series by Lindsey Davis (beginning with The Ides of April) introduce us to Flavia, a private investigator in Imperial Rome, who has succeeded her father in that profession. Loads of Roman atmosphere and history, and a lively cast of characters.

There are several excellent medieval mystery series: some of the best are the Ellis Peters books featuring Brother Cadfael, a Welsh Crusader turned Benedictine monk, whose deep knowledge of herbal lore and human nature keep him busy solving crimes in the Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul in the town of Shrewsbury. Historically accurate, psychologically shrewd, these have been loved by thousands for decades now. One of my own favorites is The Heretic’s Apprentice (which comes late in the series, but could easily be read by itself). This is not only a cleverly plotted mystery with engaging characters but contains one of the most subtle and satisfying medieval theological debates (what is heresy anyway?) that I’ve encountered anywhere.

Among historical mystery’s medieval nuns who similarly somehow keep coming across murders to solve, Dame Frevisse is one of the best. This long series (beginning with The Novice’s Tale) was written by Margaret Frazer (the first six coauthored with Mary Kuhlfeld), and features an intelligent nun whose sharp eyes miss nothing, and whose pre-monastic life (like Brother Cadfael’s) lends depth to her investigative skills. One of the delights of this series is that the narrative perspective is deliberately authentically medieval: because, as Frazer puts it, “the pleasure of going thoroughly into otherwhen as well as otherwhere is one of the great pleasures in reading.”

The Apothecary Rose, first in a series by Candace Robb, introduces us to the Welsh solider Owen Archer, one-eyed spy in the Archbishop’s service. Owen goes undercover—insinuating himself into the household of the suspect apothecary in medieval York as an apprentice—to discover how the Archbishop’s ward met his death by poison. Historically detailed and closely observed, the background of ecclesiastical politics and social norms—and medieval herbal healing lore—is as fascinating as the mystery.

P.D. James’ dystopian novel The Children of Men isn’t, properly speaking, detective fiction at all, though it certainly involves the revelation of wicked plots and a thoughtful exploration of motive and character and risk and has (as one might say) mystery at its heart. James, at the top of her game but in a startling departure for the Queen of Crime, imagines a future in which no children have been born for years; the human race has become infertile; state-fostered suicide and despair are rampant. Humanity has lost its future. But a group of dissidents believes that despite everything hope is neither lost nor dead nor impotent. Strong social criticism and deep theological reflection mark this brilliant, dark, ultimately life-bearing novel.

Literary Recommendations for All Sorts of Times and States of Mind