The Best Books Ever Written (According to Me) Part 2

I promised you a Part 2 of my The Best Books Ever Written (According to Me) post, so here it is! I also promised it wouldn’t have anything to do with vampires and I intend to keep that promise, too.

Today, I want to talk about crime thrillers. I love these crime thrillers and I love these books. They may not have gorgeous vampires, but they do have amazing characters and storylines. So, here we go…

Rizzoli & Isles Series – Tess Gerritsen

These books are fantastic. So good, in fact, that they were turned into a TV show, which was also fantastic. But if you think you can skip the books and just watch the TV show… you can’t. It veers away from the books fairly early on and the characters – while great – are not the same. Dr Maura Isles, in particular, reads completely differently to how the character appears in the show and, while I love Sasha Alexander’s version of Isles… I prefer the books. And that’s not the only difference.

There are 12 books so far and each one follows Jane Rizzoli (Detective) and Maura Isles (Medical Examiner) as they solve a murder case. There are always lots of plot twists and, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve rarely figured out “whodunnit” before all is revealed at the end of the book. Gerritsen is one of my favourite authors. She’s just so good at writing crime thrillers and murder mysteries that keep you gripped until the very end. I can’t recommend these books strongly enough – if you like crime thrillers, you will love these. The first book is The Surgeon and you should definitely give it a try.

Grant County Series – Karin Slaughter

This is another series that I just couldn’t put down once I started reading them. The characters are really well written and the relationship between Sara Linton (Paediatrician and Medical Examiner) and Jeffrey Tolliver (Police Chief and Sara’s ex-husband) is just brilliant. I don’t want to spoil the series for you, but bits of it are really emotional and you really get attached to the characters. I was sad when the series ended, so I read them all again. The first book is Blindsighted and it’s a serial killer story that’s pretty graphic in places. It really pulls you in and leaves you wanting more. They’re just brilliant books and you should read them. Everyone should. Right now.

Will Trent Series – Karin Slaughter

Once you’ve read the Grant County series, you need to read the Will Trent series. Special Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was introduced in the Grant County books and I was so pleased when I got to the end of those and found out that he had his own spin off series. These murder mysteries have so many twists and turns, I felt dizzy and I love that. I love not being able to figure out what’s really going on until the end. And even if I did figure it out, Slaughter is so clever, she had me doubting myself all the way through.

What I love about Slaughter is how well developed everything is. The characters, the plot, the backstory… these books just pull you under and won’t let you go until you’re finished. Check out Triptych, the first in the series, and let me know what you think.

The Wool Trilogy – Hugh Howey

Time for something a bit different. If there’s anything I love as much as crime thrillers and murder mysteries, it’s a good dystopian novel, and that’s what you get with Howey’s Wool trilogy. Set in a future where the world has been destroyed and the human race survives only by living underground in Silos -unaware of what really happened and how they got there – Howey tells the story of Silo 18 and the people who live in it. These are long books, I won’t lie, but I couldn’t put them down and I’ve read all three twice. The further you get through the trilogy, more and more is explained and everything starts to fall into place. It’s quite scary, really, because it’s all quite believable.

Really, it all boils down to human arrogance and we all know there’s plenty of that going around! I was gripped throughout all three books. The characters are well written – just normal people living their lives – and the plot is well developed. There are a lot of characters and lots going on, but I didn’t find myself feeling confused, because it’s all so brilliantly explained. I’m actually rereading these at the moment and I couldn’t recommend them more! You can find the first book (Wool) on Amazon here, but I promise you won’t be able to read Wool without moving on to Shift and then Dust, so you might as well just commit to the whole trilogy straight away.

I hope you enjoyed my list and that you enjoy the best books ever written (according to me), if you decide to read them (which you should!) Let me know what you think! And if you can recommend any other crime thrillers that you think should make the list, let me know about those, too!