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In this post we recommend 14 short sharp crime fiction reads to tick off your TBR!
Sometimes you want a crime story that you can consume quickly and that’s impossible to ignore. Whether it’s a con gone sideways, a murder hiding in plain sight, or a detective with more baggage than clues, these stories waste no time getting to the good stuff.
From the smoky jazz-soaked streets of A Rage in Harlem to the chilly precision of Call for the Dead, each pick on this list offers a compact but compelling dive into the darker corners of human nature.
Perfect for readers craving tension without the sprawl, these tales prove that sometimes the best crimes come in small packages.
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Therefore, this post contains Amazon affiliate links. This means, if you click on the link and purchase the book from that link, I get a few dollars at no extra cost to you! This way we can both restock our TBR stack! 😀
Happy Reading, Friends!
Series or Standalone?:
This is Book One in the ‘Harlem Detectives’ series.
'A Rage in Harlem' Back Blurb:
Jackson’s woman has found him a foolproof way to make money – a technique for turning ten dollar bills into hundreds. But when the scheme somehow fails, Jackson is left broke, wanted by the police and desperately racing to get back both his money and his loving Imabelle. The first of Chester Himes’s novels featuring the hardboiled Harlem detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, A Rage in Harlem has swagger, brutal humour, lurid violence, a hearse loaded with gold and a conman dressed as a Sister of Mercy.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is Book One in the ‘George Smiley’ series.
'Call For The Dead' Back Blurb:
After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man’s death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan’s widow to find out what could have led him to such desperation. But on the very day that Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans – and their agents – know more about this man’s death than the Circus previously imagined? Le Carre’s debut novel, Call for the Dead, introduced the tenacious and retiring George Smiley in a gripping tale of espionage and deceit.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is Book One in the ‘Wyatt‘ series.
'Kickback' Back Blurb:
Wyatt plans to hit a suburban law firm for the settlement money in its safe. But he’s working with cowboys, and the lawyer planning to rip off her boss is a little too mysterious for his comfort. Wyatt’s as good as they come, but everything needs to go like clockwork—and you can’t always plan around human frailty. This is the perfect introduction to an exquisite series: hard-boiled Melbourne in the time of video rentals and answering machines, paper money, Datsuns and Customlines. It’s as sinewy and efficient as Wyatt himself, superbly crafted and relentlessly tense. And it gets even better from here.
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Series or Standalone?:
This book is a standalone novel.
'My Darkest Prayer' Back Blurb:
Whether it’s working at his cousin’s funeral home or tossing around the local riffraff at his favourite bar, Nathan Waymaker is a man who knows how to handle the bodies. A former marine and sheriff’s deputy, Nathan has built a reputation in his small Southern town as a man who can help when all other avenues have been exhausted. When a beloved local minister is found dead, his parishioners ask Nathan to make sure the death isn’t swept under the rug. What starts out as an easy payday soon descends into a maze of mayhem filled with wannabe gangsters, vicious crime lords, porn stars, crooked police officers, and a particularly treacherous preacher and his mysterious wife. Nathan must use all his varied skills and some of his wit to navigate the murky waters of small town corruption even as dark secrets of his own threaten to come to the surface.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is Book 8 in the ‘Albert Campion’ series.
'The Case of the Late Pig' Back Blurb:
Private detective Albert Campion is summoned to the village of Kepesake to investigate a particularly distasteful death. The body turns out to be that of Pig Peters, freshly killed five months after his own funeral. Soon other corpses start to turn up, just as Peters’s body goes missing. It takes all Campion’s coolly incisive powers of detection to unravel the crime.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a ‘Slough House‘ novella.
'The Catch' Back Blurb:
If life in the Intelligence Service has taught John Bachelor anything, it’s to keep his head down. Especially now, when he’s living rent-free in a dead spook’s flat. So he’s not delighted to be woken at dawn by a pair of Regent’s Park’s heavies, looking for a client he’s not seen in years. John doesn’t know what secrets Benny Manors has stolen, but they’re attracting the wrong attention. And if he’s to save his own skin, not to mention safeguard his living arrangements, John has to find Benny before those secrets see the light. Benny could be anywhere, provided it serves alcohol. So John sets out on a reluctant trawl through the bars of the capital, all the while plagued by the age-old questions: Will he end up sleeping in his car? How many bottles of gin can he afford at London prices? And just how far will Regent’s Park go to prevent anyone rocking the Establishment’s boat?
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a standalone novel.
'The Driver's Seat' Back Blurb:
Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants’ office for sixteen years. So she leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly-dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise’s last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a standalone novel.
'The Final Solution' Back Blurb:
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year-old man, vaguely remembered by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with other people. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African grey parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out – a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case – the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot – beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth?
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a standalone novel.
'The Grifters' Back Blurb:
Roy Dillon is young, good-looking and devastatingly charming. He’s also a completely amoral con man. Lily, his mother, works for the mob. Moira Langtry, Roy’s mistress, is always looking for the main chance, and so is Carol Roberg, the nurse brought in to look after Roy when a bad choice of mark means he has an unfortunate encounter with a baseball bat and a bad case of internal bleeding.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is Book One in the ‘Lew Griffin’ series.
'The Long-Legged Fly' Back Blurb:
There are those who vanish into the steaming New Orleans night – and it is part time Private Investigator, Repo-man and blues afficionado Lew Griffin’s job to find them. A prisoner of the bottle, his past and his skin, Griffin knows every hidden corner of Hell…and is on intimate terms with the demons who dwell there. But the disappearance of a militant woman activist is about to set Griffin on a roller-coaster careening towards rock bottom – carrying the brilliant, tormented black P.I. ever closer to a nightmare that threatens to hit him where he lives..and more brutally than he ever imagined possible.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a standalone novel.
'The Man Who Came Uptown' Back Blurb:
Anna Byrne is a jailhouse librarian. In a place where hope is hard to find, the power of books can be a light in the dark. For some of the prisoners, her work is life-changing. Like Michael Hudson, her best student, who’s been locked up awaiting trial before his sudden release. He’s relieved to be free – to ‘come uptown’, as they say – but can’t shake the question: why is the witness who put him behind bars is suddenly refusing to testify? There’s a man who might have the answer, but he wants something first. Phil Ornazian is a private investigator who moonlights as a petty criminal. He’s not exactly proud of it, but times are hard in Washington, D.C. People have to change to survive, or die trying. But everything comes at a price and, at some point, everyone has to pay.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a standalone novel.
'The Postman Always Rings Twice' Back Blurb:
When Frank, an amoral young drifter, gets thrown off a hay truck in the California desert, he ends up at a diner run by Cora and her inconvenient husband, Nick. This chance meeting puts them all on a sure path to perdition.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a standalone novel.
'The Red House Mystery' Back Blurb:
The story unfolds at the Red House, where a gathering of guests is disrupted by the sudden arrival of a stranger, Robert Ablett. His unexpected visit turns deadly when a gunshot is heard, and Robert is found murdered in a locked room. Mark Ablett, the host, is nowhere to be found, leaving a trail of suspicion and unanswered questions. Anthony Gillingham, a curious and resourceful guest, takes it upon himself to investigate the crime, joined by his loyal friend, Bill Beverley. Together, they navigate a labyrinth of clues, hidden motives, and red herrings to unravel the mystery.
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Series or Standalone?:
This is a standalone novel.
'Tokyo Express' Back Blurb:
A perfectly plotted, cosy detective story from Seicho Matsumoto, Japan’s master of mystery. In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Standing in the coast’s wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate- the flush of the couple’s cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers’ suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime. Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seicho Matsumoto’s masterpiece – and as one of the most fiendish puzzles ever written.
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