Books like Vertigo 42 by Martha Grimes

A charming and clever women detective, Precious Ramotswe, solves mysteries in Botswana's small town of Midsomin, South Africa, from 1986 to 1997, facing dangers and love in the process. The novel is beloved by readers worldwide for its clever dialogue and characters who are as flawed as the rest of us. The book is a bestseller and has been translated into 45 languages, including Polish, German, and Japanese, among others. It was also voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

When a friend of his adopted daughter reports a serial killer targeting traveling panhandlers, private investigator Lucas Davenport is drawn into North Dakota, where he uncovers a violent subculture and a deadly conspiracy.

In southeast Minnesota, a school board vote to allow a local reporter to be killed triggers a mystery, as Virgil Flowers investigates a dognapping ring that has expanded into medical labs and a murder.

In Wyoming’s remote Black Hills, game warden Joe Pickett lands at a mysterious ranch where rumours of hidden wealth and murder swirl. He must uncover the truth while confronting dangerous locals and unexpected betrayal.

A family’s idyllic summer party at a grand estate in Cornwall turns into a desperate search when six‑year‑old Theo vanishes, leaving the house abandoned and the siblings torn apart.

Detective Joona Linna returns from Sweden to chase a web of homicides tied to a clandestine arms deal, blending crime investigation with thriller suspense.

Psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD cop Milo Sturgis team up to chase a serial killer whose twisted motives and clever tactics keep the police and forensic psychologists on their toes.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec investigates a surprising death in the quiet village of Three Pines, uncovering a sinister truth beneath the seeming hunting accident.

Agatha Christie’s posthumously published autobiography traces her life from early childhood through two marriages, two World Wars, her writing career and archaeological adventures with husband Max Mallowan.

Flora Dane survived a years‑long kidnapping and now struggles to reintegrate while Boston detective D.D. Warren investigates a brutal crime that may link her past and a new abduction.

A former TV producer battles her past when she reopens an unsolved murder for a new true‑crime series, only to find that the killer is still watching.

When Amanda Pierce vanishes on her wedding day, investigative TV host Laurie Moran teams with her crew to reconstruct the night at Florida’s Grand Victoria Hotel, uncovering hidden motives and a cold case that threatens to stay buried.

This story of obsession, deceit and human frailty has an almost overpowering intensity... Alongside Patricia Highsmith Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac deserve recognition as part of the great tradition of chilling psychological crime fiction. Crime Fiction Lover Makes a fascinating companion to the Hitchcock film, and is, I think, an amazing book in its own right Lit Love Gallic noir at its most psychologically acute Crime Scene A fantastic book Col's Criminal Library One of the pleasures of reading the book is noting how it compares with, and in places even improves on, the film.

Former athlete Clay Edison, now Deputy Coroner, confronts a seemingly clear homicide when a psychology professor’s daughter insists her father was murdered. As he digs deeper, Edison uncovers a tangled web of scandal, violence, and a hidden experiment that threatens his own heart.

When a red‑haired girl with a bloodstained shoulder is found in a tree in Central Park, detective Kathleen Mallory is drawn into a 15‑year‑old homicide mystery that intersects her own troubled past.

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950--and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story--of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school's tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder--but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse....An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions--and a rich literary delight.From the Hardcover edition.

A television producer and her lawyer host investigate the mysterious killing of UCLA student Susan Dempsey in the first episode of their cold‑case series, "Under Suspicion," uncovering secrets among Hollywood elites and tech billionaires.

Detective Richard Jury tackles his most sinister case yet when a deceased London girl’s body unwinds a long‑cold Launceston disappearance, forcing him to confront a mystery that has plagued police for years.

Detective Chief Inspector Blair plots to remove Hamlet’s loyal Sergeant Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh, but after Cyril Sessions is murdered, Macbeth becomes the main suspect in a tense Scottish police investigation.