Justtrace wrote:I've read all of those and also all of Coben and Kellermen. Looking for similar type authors who aren't cheesy and well developed characters.
Minette Walters - not typical police procedural, but character-based e.g. "The Scold's Bridle", which won a CWA Gold Dagger. Wiki plot summary as follows:
"Mathilda Gillespie, an eccentric recluse known for her incredible meanness of nature, is found dead in her bathtub, her wrists slashed and her head locked inside a so-called 'scold's bridle', a rusted cage built with tongue clamps which was used as a torture device throughout the middle ages. The dead woman's only friend, Dr. Sarah Blakeney, becomes the prime suspect in her murder after police discover that she's been left a great deal of money in the will.
To clear her name, Sarah delves deep into Mathilda's mysterious past, and subsequently unravels an intricate web of greed, abuse and depravity."
(currently - 1 August 2018 - available via this forum)
Another English writer known for her quality of writing, who wrote quality police procedurals as Ruth Rendell - try, "Some Lie and Some Die", Wiki again:
Kingsmarkham doesn't have too many complaints about its first annual rock festival, but then in a nearby quarry two lovers find a body that makes even [Inspector] Reg Wexford's stomach lurch. All he can discover is that there is a strange connection with the star of the festival.
(not currently - 1 August 2018 - available via this forum, but findable elsewhere. I have a copy but am not sure how to post books - it looks as though the standard for layout etc is very high!)
Same writer, but as Barbara Vine, wrote stories based more around the people involved than the police, who may never find out what the characters did or felt, though the reader will. Try "A Fatal Inversion" - another CWA Gold Dagger award:
(currently - 1 August 2018 - available via this forum)In the process of burying a beloved dog in the animal cemetery of Wyvis Hall, a beautiful Suffolk country house, the owner unearths the skeletons of a dead woman and baby. The horrific discovery challenges the buried memories and guilt of a small group of young people who, 10 years earlier, spent the broiling Summer of 1976 in a self-indulgently irresponsible idyll at Wyvis Hall, unexpectedly inherited by one of their number. Slowly the facts emerge and the past catches up with them.