Fan of the Cormoran Strike novels? Eagerly waiting for the next one?
The series by J.K. Rowling, written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, has been one of the biggest hits of recent years. The eighth book – The Hallmarked Man – will be of particular interest to Channel Island readers, as the author has confirmed that several chapters take place in Sark. But with no publication date yet confirmed, Strike fans will just have to wait....so what can you read in the meantime?
Well, if you enjoy a detective series, it's a bit of a golden age at the moment - the Library is full of award-winning crime novels to get stuck into. On this list we’ve gathered some of our favourite series featuring beleaguered, bad-tempered, wry and courageous detectives you can’t help but love.
Click the titles to read the first in each series - and prepare to get hooked!
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1. Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French (6 books)
Tana French’s New York Times bestselling and award-winning mystery series immerses readers in the lives and cases of the Dublin Murder Squad detectives.
Start with In the Woods
When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
Twenty years on, Rob Ryan - the child who came back - is a detective in the Dublin police force. He's changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl's body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
2. Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths (16 books)
Elly Griffiths best-selling British crime series follows forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway as she aids the police in their murder investigations across the bleak and remote landscape of Norfolk.
Start with The Crossing Places
A child's bones are discovered on the windswept Norfolk marshes. Believing them to be ancient, the police call in Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist. But this is no prehistoric grave. A cold missing person case has now become a murder investigation.
Dr Ruth Galloway is called in when a child's bones are discovered near the site of a prehistoric henge on the north Norfolk salt marshes. Are they the remains of a local girl who disappeared ten years earlier - or are the bones much older?
DCI Harry Nelson refuses to give up the hunt for the missing girl. Since she vanished, someone has been sending him bizarre anonymous notes about ritual sacrifice, quoting Shakespeare and the Bible. He knows that Ruth's expertise and experience could help him finally to put this case to rest. But when a second child goes missing, Ruth finds herself in danger from a killer who knows she's getting ever closer to the truth...
3. Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson (6 books)
Kate Atkinson’s series follows Jackson Brodie, a private investigator, former police officer and war veteran. Brodie has a tough-guy exterior but a soft heart, becoming a magnet for the lost and dysfunctional.
Start with Case Histories
Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet - Lost on the left, Found on the right - and the two never seem to balance. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, Jackson attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected...
4. Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin (25 books)
Dubbed ‘tartan noir’, Ian Rankin’s series follows Detective Inspector John Rebus, ex elite SAS now solving brutal murders in the grittiest parts of Edinburgh.
Start with Knots & Crosses
'And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you...?'
'That sort of thing' is the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls. And now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own young daughter spirited away south by his disenchanted wife, is one of many policemen hunting the killer.
And then the messages begin to arrive; knotted string and matchstick crosses - taunting Rebus with pieces of a puzzle only he can solve.
5. Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves (13 books)
Ann Cleeves critically acclaimed series sees Vera Stanhope working as Detective Inspector for the Northumbria & City Police. Tough and courageous, but equally bad tampered, Vera solves grisly murders across her beloved Northumberland.
Start with The Crow Trap
Three very different women come together at an isolated cottage on the North Pennines to complete an environmental survey. Three women who each know the meaning of betrayal . . .
Rachael, the team leader, is still reeling after a double betrayal by her lover and boss. Anne, a botanist, sees the survey as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace, a strange, uncommunicative young woman, hiding plenty of her own secrets.
Rachael is the first to arrive at the cottage, but when she gets there, she is shocked to discover an apparent suicide. But then another death occurs, and a fourth woman enters the picture – the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women’s tangled lives . . .
6. PC Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (17 books)
The series centres on the adventures of Peter Grant, a young officer in the Metropolitan Police; who, following an unexpected encounter with a ghost, is recruited into the small branch of the Met that deals with magic and the supernatural.
Start with Rivers of London
Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost.
Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.
Looking for more reading inspiration? Check out more book blogs here.
