Trying to find new murder mystery writers to replace Agatha Christie

I'm a die-hard Agatha Christie fana nd have read almost all her books. I need to find new authors to replace her. I tried PD James and I do like her stuff, but not that much. Does anyone have recommendations for old fashioned whodunits?

The obvious ones would be Dorothy Sayers, with her splendid Peter Wimsey stories.Also Margery Allingham (Albert Campion) and Ngaio Marsh Roderick Alleyn. All very much of the same type although perhaps Sayers is a little more difficult to read.Well worth the effort however.The other two are easier reads and I should think with over 60 books to go at they should keep you going for a while.

The Lincoln Rhyme books by Jeffrey Deaver are sometimes quite nice whodunits too.

I'd suggest Betty Rowlands, Josephine Tey or Ruth Rendell (although some of her books can be more disturbing than Agatha Christie.) Katherine Hall Page's "The Body in the..." series might appeal to you, too. You could always try searching for "Agatha Christie Read-alikes"--you'll come up with tons of suggestions.

Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver series. Written in the same era as Agatha Christie's mysteries. Miss Silver shares some characteristics with Miss Marple, but is a more entertaining character. Similar social milieu.

You might wish to try Edgar Wallace and Michael Innes, both close to Agatha Christie's style.

I quite enjoy the Amelia Peabody archeological mysteries by Ellis Peters. Peters has written several other characters over the years, but I think Peabody is closest to a Christie character.

What about Miss Seeton? Closer to a Miss Marple you won't get!

Psst, adeptmagic, Ellis Peters writes the Brother Cadfael mysteries and Elizabeth Peters writes the Amelia Peabody mysteries. :o)

I agree with the suggestion of Margery Allingham and also *love* this link for mystery author suggestions!
http://www.santafelibrary.org/if.html

Doh! That's what I get for not checking. Since I read both, my mind gets confuzzled!

I've read all of the Agatha Christie books - I don't think you'll find a suitable replacement to be honest. Maybe a total change for a while then try the suggestions above? She is way too good to find an equivalent :)

Yes, they are very similar names and easy to mix up...I had to edit *my* post because I first wrote "Elizabether Peters". LOL!!!

I hate to contradict anyone, but I think Jeffery Deaver's books are probably more violent than you'd want.

You might try Louise Penny's books, Still Life and Fatal Grace. Both books feature Inspector Armand Gamache, investigating murders in the small village of Three Pines in Quebec. Interesting detective, village mysteries, and closed cast of characters. Her books are as close as I can get to Agatha Christie.

Let the LT members decide.

You might give Simon Brett a try. His style is very British, low violence and nicely, although not intricately, plotted. I put him in the 'cozies' bucket.

Try Patricia Moyes. Some of her books have really splendid puzzles. My favorite is Many Deadly Returns. The quality of the mystery varies from book to book, but I grew fond of the Henry Tibbett series, and forgave a few shortcomings here and there.

Just did a quick run through my catalog with the tag "crime." Here are a few authors who are more lor less "old-fashioned" and mostly British. They each have a distinctive voice, however, and not necessarily closely aligned with Christie.
Catherine Aird
Nicholas Blake
Christianna Brand
Leo Bruce
W.J. Burley
Jeanne M. Dams
Cyril Hare
Charles Todd

The mysteries by Georgette Heyer are very similar to Christie. Also try Cyril Hare. Catherine Aird is another good bet. She writes very pleasant british mysteries that usually have a good puzzle. For more modern stuff, one might try Jill McGown, Caroline Graham and Deborah Crombie.

There's a brand new one out by Charles Finch called A Beautiful Blue Death that is almost entirely puzzle-based in much the way that Christie approached her plots. I rather enjoyed it.

Mary Roberts Rinehart is one of my favorites. She's similar to Patricia Wentworth and Agatha Christie, but sometimes incorporates a little of the supernatural. Her books can be hard to find, but they're worth it; just make sure to get a mystery and not one of her romances.

Gladys Mitchell was a contemporary and friend of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. I think her books are just as good. The PBS Mystery! program has a Mrs. Bradley Mysteries series that is based on some of these books. (I have a review for Rising of the Moon, if you want to check it out).

Peter Lovesey writes mysteries that remind me of Agatha Christie's style. For a starter, check out Bloodhounds--it's a mystery about some killings amid a group of mystery fans. It's a fun mystery--plus, you get the extra bonus of reading about the characters discussing the virtues of other mystery styles and authors. Peter Lovesey is great with characters and dialogue--especially in The Circle. I'll write a better review than this later and post it on the Bloodhounds and The Circle pages, respectively.

If you haven't read Boris Akunin, you might want to consider looking him up. His books are written in different styles, and Murder on the Leviathan is very much in the style of Agatha Christie.

Edited for touchstones.

I really enjoyed The Charles Finch book!

Jane Langton has written a series of mysteries featuring a dective named Homer Kelly. "Murder at the Gardner" and "Emily Dickinson is Dead" are certainly worth a read. An interesting plus is that Langton herself does all of the illustrations in the books (at least in some editions.)

Since Christie wrote what I'd call the "cozy" mystery, I did an LT search for that word as a tag and got roughly 3000 hits. You might try that.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/cozy

Just want to reinforce quartzite's excellent suggestion - Georgette Heyer is the closest I've ever found to Agatha Christie, and I read them interchangeably, even though they of course have their differences.

Favourites:
Behold, Here's Poison
A Blunt Instrument - extra good on audio
The Unfinished Clue
No Wind of Blame - also extra good on audio.

Heyer's characters are sometimes a little more theatrical, and her plots a little less complicated than those of Agatha Christie. They both wrote during the same period.

I don't recommend starting with Penhallow, it's a little different, darker than the rest, though it has got all the Agatha Christie elements of a country house with people cooped up in it who don't get along. But so does Envious Casca, which reminds me a lot of Hercule Poirot's Christmas.

I am currently re-reading Experiment with Death by E.X. Ferrars another British writer whom most Christie fans would enjoy.

I've rather recently begun to read mysteries again (after teaching a detective fiction class years ago). My most recent favorite was Silent, In the Grave by Deanna Raybourn. I really like the eclectic characters. Raybourn's second book in the series comes out after the new year.

I think that Mma Ramotswe in the no. 1 ladies detective agency is very much like Miss Marple. She solves the mysteries by listening to what people say and her knowledge of human nature. I've enjoyed them as much as I did Christie's Miss Marple books.

On the American side of the water Charlotte Armstrong is good. My favorites are The Gift Shop and The Dream Walker

I started reading Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who... series after I finished Christie's books. I don't necessarily enjoy them as much, but I've only just started, they might grow on me. I think they have a similar, humanist tone, if you know what I mean... they aren't over violent or lewd. The main character in them is a bit like Poirot - charming and quirky, even in his flaws.

Try Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian mysteries. I am a die hard Agathat Christie fan - have read them all. I just discovered Jane Haddam's books and and reading all of them now. Demarkian is known as the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot by reputation in the books. Follows a very similar style with enjoyable characters. The writing gets much more complex as the books progress.

Oh, how about Elizabeth George? More modern but set in the UK. Intricate subtle plots, well-developed main characters, the village feeling mixed with police procedure mixed with big city. Start with the earlier ones.

How about the Nero Wolfe books?

And the Martha Grimes series?

I'll also plug Donna Andrews' Meg Lanslow series again--I like the really lighthearted tone and eccentric characters.

I like Elizabeth George but they are much longer than the Christie books . . .

Anyway, I think the idea to search on cozy mystery tags here on LT was brilliant!

Ngaio Marsh, perhaps, or John Dickson Carr, for a kind of Golden Age of Crime Fiction feel. A terrific, still highly under-valued novel is The Conjure Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem, by Rudolph Fisher. It's set in Harlem in the 1930s, is superbly plotted, and has a bit of everything: village-cozy (Harlem is like a small town), amateur, police, locked-room, gothic, humor, and much intricacy.

I'll second both Demarkian and Wolfe. Haddam has a style which takes a little getting used to: she may have as many as four chapters of character introduction before she gets to any actual crime, and they aren't short chapters.

I reviewed one of her books here:
http://www.librarything.com/review/11856386

Wolfe is different (hey, shorter novels and short stories, so...) but wonderful.

Another American writer for Christie fans to look at is Mary Roberts Rinehart. Not all of her books are mysteries, but the ones that are are ususally quite well done. some classics include The Circular Staircase, The Door, The Swimming Pool, less famous, but one of my favorites is The Yellow Room.

R. Austin Freeman was more or less of Christie's generation, but he's an acquired taste. His detective is both attorney and scientist, and the plots depend a lot on forensics. His detective is John Thordyke.

I'm reading the series by Robin Paige right now. They are set in the Victorian Age, have the cosy element, and the additional element of having real life characters such as Arthur Conan Dole; Jack London and others interwoven into the stories. These are also good if you want to see how forensics such as fingerprints and ballistics got their slow start into the detectives bag of tricks.

#38 Freeman certainly worth a read, in my opinion. I believe he was known as one of the `Big Five`, the five best-selling crime writers of the `30s (the others included Sayers, Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts - I can`t recall the 5th.

A couple of suggestions from me - firstly The Case of the Bismarck Papers by Pierre Quiroule (aka W W Sayers). I love this book so much I`ve worn out two cheap paperback editions - eventually my wife took pity on me and bought me a hardback for my birthday ! Also Danger at Westways by Donald Stuart, very much in the tradition of the country-house murder, though somehow never seems like it is.

Also Murder With Variety by William Arthur (aka W Howard Baker) was good as I recall.

As a more general observation, as a cash-strapped youngster growing up in the UK, I satisfied my appetite for endless murder (the literary variety, you understand) with cheap second-hand short story anthologies from the `30s ,`40s and `50s, usually featuring Freeman etc. I bet such things can still be found on E-Bay/Abe. There certainly are various anthologies put together more recently by David Stuart Davies that might fit the bill. For more up-to-date English murder, you might try David Belbin (ed), City of Crime.

I vote with others who said Dorothy Sayers. She was a contemporary of Christie's and they have a similar feel to that era.

(I am getting too many good ideas about other series from you guys! I need 228 more years to read.)

Funnily enough, Sayers was editor/compiler of one of the short story collections I mentioned, Tales of Detection I think it was called. As I recall it was a mixed bag with at one story that I thought had no merit at all, and one being an absolute forgotten gem of a story.

I should have made it clear, City of Crime is very different to Christie, I just mentioned it for a bit of contrast.

I also should have mentioned another great personal favourite, Season of the Skylark by Jack Trevor Story.

#41

I know exactly what you mean. Somedays I`m not even sure I have time to breathe, let alone read !

Emily Brightwell has a series about Mrs Jeffries, set in Victorian England but has very much that cozy feel.

P.C. Doherty is a great English mystery writer as well. Low violence, great suspense, and fascinating plots. He is very prolific, writing books set in ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, medieval England, etc. Here's a link to a list of his titles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.C._Doherty

Like kathi above, I am fond of W J Burley who writes delightfully gentle mysteries involving Superintendent Wycliffe and the settings are nearly all in Cornwall (UK). Beautiful and very Agatha Christie-ish.

I told my local bookseller I enjoyed Agatha Christie (have a full set .. yay!) and they put me on to Jacqueline Winspear. I've not read any of her other work yet, but the first was quite Christie-ish.

Another one I enjoyed was the Dangerous Davies book by Leslie Thomas- can't find my copy but Touchstones came to the rescue once more.

Sayers and Charlotte Armstrong get my vote, and I have most of their works and re-read them frequently.

Georgette Heyer too. I've put up other posts saying that I keep forgetting I'm reading Georgette Heyer and think I'm reading Christie!

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Ellery Queen. They're not British, but several authors mentioned above aren't either. I read them all a long time ago, but remember them as being intricate and well-plotted. Several are locked-room scenarios, and several challenge the reader after, say 3/4 of the book, to solve the mystery because all the clues have been given.

Here is a list of mystery writers since Agatha Christie (1955) who have won the Grand Master Award,the highest honor bestowed by the Mystery Writers of America based in New York. Bill Pronzini is the current 2008 winner.For full list,click

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Writers_of_America

Who is your favorite writer from the list?

Try Josephine Tey's books, they have reprinted them very recently

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Elizabeth Daly who was one of AC's own favourite writers. Her books can be a bit uneven, but most of them are very good reading. The only problem is that I don't think they are currently in print, and second-hand copies are quite hard to get hold of (in the UK at least).

#51 JonRob

Elizabeth Daly's books seem pretty widely available on Amazon and half.com here in the US--maybe we need to set up something like the angel thing on BookMooch to get books for each other? Not sure how it would work, but where books are concerned . .

I recently got Unexpected Night by Elizabeth daly from Amazon, but have not read it yet.
And yes, I bought it because I read somewhere else that she was one of Dame Agatha's favourite writers.

Charlotte Macleod has 2 series, one "starring" Peter Shandy, a professor at a Midwest college and the second features a recently widowed young woman (in the first) with some quirky family members. The first one is "the Withdrawing Room." I don't remember which one is first in the Peter Shandy series. I have them all packed away somewhere to read again. They are more modern timewise, but still "gentle" mysteries and with more humour than Agatha Christie (whom I also love and have read everything by). I also have all the Nero Wofle and enjoy those to.

Of course, another option would be to go backwards in time to earlier detective story writers - Jacques Futrelle would be one possibility. But there are many others.

I, too, have thoroughly enjoyed Agatha Christie's works. I think you would like Nancy Atherton's "Aunt Dimity" Series - they are great fun.

How about Georgette Heyer? She's of that Golden Age of British detective fiction, and wrote fun, smart mysteries. She also wrote about a gazillion Regency romances (which I hear are AWESOME, though I've never ready any), so be careful if you look for her stuff.

BeckyJG, I was just thinking of her!
As a matter of fact, I am reading Envious Casca right now, and like it a lot. I have read several of her other mysteries, and enjoyed them all. So, I heartily endorse your suggestion.

ETA Her Regency romances ARE awesome indeed! Quite well researched and marvelously written.

Heyer's romances are wonderful--so funny, so comforting. She has the period slang down perfectly, and all other Regency romances seem like they are trying to be as good as hers, but never are.

I'm not sure if she's already been mentioned, but I can recommend Canadian author Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache mysteries--starting with Still Life.

*Edited to fix touchstone.

Adnama,
Try listening to the Cat Who stories narrated by George Guidall. He is absolutely marvelous at distinguishing different voices; particularly Qwilleran and any of the Pickax Scots.

Sharon Kay Penman's The Queen's Man, Candice Robb's The Apothecary Rose, David Roberts' Sweet Poison, Josephine Tey The Daughter of Time. Derek Jacobi narrated an unabridged recording of Daughter of Time that's a treat to listen to. Good luck!

I second (or third!) the suggestion to try Josephine Tey after Agatha Christie!! I actually did that myself after finishing Christie's books and I've found Tey's books to be...just delightful.

I discovered — with the help of a second hand book store owner — Kate Ellis and her series of British murder mysteries with an archeological subplot and great characters including the lead character of Wesley Peterson. I think her series may be mentioned elsewhere on the site.

In the last couple of weeks I have also been enjoying a new series by Elly Griffiths whose main character is an archeology professor Ruth Galloway, a down to earth wonderful mid career person who enjoys broad unnumbered landscapes of marshland and sky.. :-)

The Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley have always reminded me of Miss Marple, even if these two amateur detectives are probably 50 years apart in age! It's written in good fun, and it's all about dark things lurking in the cozy English countryside. Just add a bit of a Nancy Drew and stir :)

>64 Bond_Girl: I second Bond_Girl's suggestion. Alan Bradley's books remind me of when I became hooked on reading mysteries, which started with Agatha Christie in the fifties. That just happens to be the time the Flavia de Luce series is set. I recommend this series highly.

Louise Penny writes a series set in a small Canadian village south of Montreal--the villagers are well developed and delightful, and the plots are clever. This could be a good follow-up to Agatha Christie.

I agree (#66). Louise Penny has that quality of village life in her books that Christie so frequently has. Cozy, but not insipid.

I like looking at the Agatha award nominees - not all of them fit the bill exactly but more often than not, there is something interesting there that might work.

I do not know how you can favourably compare Penney to Christie.Penney-cosy but insipid

James Runcie, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, is a good one, more for the setting & characters than the plots, which are more realistic but less entertaining than A.C.'s.

I really liked Silent in the Grave but the rest of her series got too "romancy" for me. And was anyone else too embarrassed to walk around with her books because the covers looked like "bodice rippers"?

I second that (#66). I think Louise Penny is one of the best mystery authors I've found in years. I'd read the series in order, though.

The first Peter Shandy mystery is Rest You Merry. The first Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn mystery is The Family Vault, but that one's quite sad, so I took a friend's advice and started with The Withdrawing Room. Charlotte MacLeod also wrote as Alisa Craig. Her Grub-and-Stakers mysteries could get a bit too cutsey, but I still enjoy them. The first book is The Grub-and-Stakers Move a Mountain. By the way, that series has a character who writes Regency Romances. The other Alisa Craig series is the Maddoc Rhys mysteries (he's a Mountie). The first book in that one is A Pint of Murder. MacLeod also wrote a stand-alone mystery as Craig: The Terrible Tide, a biography of Mary Roberts Rinehart Had She But Known, and edited a couple of anthologies of Christmas mysteries: Mistletoe Mysteries and Christmas Stalkings.

Christie-like in that they are far-fetched, have delightful characters and are cosy entertaining, try Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels, starting with Case Histories. Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone books, A is for Alibi etc.. also have a certain Christiness about them, but I can't quite pin it down! I think she's up to W is for Wasted now, so plenty to go at.

It's been a long while since I read an Agatha Christie--decades, in fact--but I do remember that when I ran out of them, I moved on to John Dickson Carr quite happily. I eventually found Nero Wolfe and ventured away from the British settings and style (which I do still love).

Definitely Nero Wolfe} and John Dickson Carr (a.k.a. Carter Dickson)! Neither is easy to figure out, although I've had much less luck with Carr.

A relatively new entrant to the mystery genre is C.C. Benison. I have thoroughly enjoyed the first two Father Christmas books -- Eleven Pipers Piping and Twelve Drummers Drumming. The mysteries are well structured and fun to work out. Very cozy but not as cute as the titles might suggest.

I too am a die hard fan of Christie...after finishing all her books, i had the same question,now what??
i found out ngaio marsh,patricia wentworth,gladys mitchell,john dickson carr to be excellent!!

I have not yet read any of Agatha Christie's works, however the best old-fashioned mystery that I have read so far was That Affair Next Door by Green, Anna Katherine. It was very clean for a murder, and full of unexpected perplexing twist with a surprise ending.

This are all great ideas - my favourite at this point in Louise Penny. I think you'll love her Quebec-based mysteries if you like Agatha Christie. I've also just started mysteries by Kerry Greenwood. These are character-based mysteries set in Australia (though some might have also taken place in France, I'm not yet certain). The heroine of the series I'm reading is Phryne Fisher and the context is post World War I. Phryne is out-of-place and-time as she solves mysteries with serious social consequences. She's feminist, socialist, and comfortable with people of all kinds --- with the exception of the middle class! Lots of fun.

A note for UtopianPessimist ... I haven't read the Phryne Fisher books yet, but thought you'd like to know that Australian television is currently airing a series, "Miss Fisher Mysteries," base on the books. My husband and I enjoyed the first season, which is available on Netflix, very much and look forward to the second, which will be available soon. Greenwood loved the production, saying they did it the way she wrote it: http://www.phrynefisher.com/TVseries.html. The stories are good, the characters are fun and the period detail is excellent. Also, I love the Louise Penney/Armand Gamache books, too, and though I found his second in command, Jean-Guy, unbearable in the last two books, Penney wrote a very satisfying ending to the ongoing police corruption plot. Can't wait for the next book, "The Long Way Home," when Gamache is in "retirement."

For old-fashioned mystery fans, I recommend Robert Galbraith's "The Cuckoo's Calling." I read it before I knew Galbraith's true identity (J.K. Rowling) and loved it. It moves a bit slowly in the beginning, but I loved the characters and the nice twists in the mystery. Book two in the series is due out in June.
I've read most of the great mystery authors of the last century (makes me sound very old, doesn't it) such as Christie, Marsh, James, Sayers, Tey. I don't care for the gruesome violence found in so many modern mysteries and will follow up on several of the authors mentioned in these posts. Thanks!

You might want to try Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley series - these have recently been coming out in Kindle editions. She was a contemporary of Christie's (the first Mrs. Bradley, Speedy Death, came out in 1929), and there is some slight resemblance between Mrs. Bradley and Miss Marple.

For a good solid crime novel from a bygone era, when the pace was slower and who-done-it was more important than how-gory-and-gruesome-it-was, try Maj Sjowal and Per Wahloosl Martin Beck series or Georges Simenons Inspector Maigret books.
For a more up-to-date, cosy, small town, well-plotted read try Camilla Lackbergs Fjallbacka novels.
of course there is always Sherlock Holmes.....

I'm afraid that's true which is why she is so universally loved :)

Yes indeed not Christie but I love Ellery Queen a true classic :)

Yes she is wonderful too I actually have one on kindle :)

Happy to discover this site. Thanks for all the suggestions, fellow mystery fans. From you I've gone from Louise Penny and Ngaio Marsh to Elizabeth Peters - Amelia Peabody. Would like to suggest two terrific Australian mystery writers, Garry Disher and Shane Maloney. Excellent reads.

Maisie Dobbs series
by Jacqueline Winspear

Miss Silver was going to be my suggestion.

I recently read Hag's Nook by John Dickson Carr; it definitely gave me a Christie vibe ... as I understand it, he is one of the pioneers of the "locked room" mystery scenario.

I know many of you have probably already read this book, as it was a pretty big hit, but Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders was a wonderful send up to the classic mystery genre. It is a stand alone, so it can't replace a series character like Poirot, but it is worth reading, and if you enjoyed Christie, then it might be right up your alley. The fictional detective within the novel owes much to Christie's famous detective.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Mignon G. Eberhart here. Active in the 1930s and 1940s, in particular, she was touted at the time by some as the American Agatha Christie. At any rate, her books were very will received critically and quite popular. I've just read my first by her, The Hangman's Whip, and enjoyed it very much.

I like her too, but she's not like Agatha Christie. With her orphaned heroines who put their trust in the wrong man, she's verging on the "had I but known" genre. Her Sarah Keyte books are an exception.

>95 pamelad: "With her orphaned heroines who put their trust in the wrong man, she's verging on the "had I but known" genre."

I've only read one book of her's, as noted above, but that one book is not as you've described. Small sample size, though, certainly.

tendring

Louise Penny's Gamache series becomes darker as it progresses.

Although they do suffer from the racism and sexism of the era, and Grace Latham sometimes makes me want to scream, the Latham-Colonel Primrose mysteries by Leslie Ford can be good. In my opinion, the weakest is the first, Strangled Witness. Mrs. Latham does not appear in that one. On the other hand, Colonel Primrose doesn't appear in the fourth book, Three Bright Pebbles.

Hello from Oz.

I was going to suggest the Patricia Wentworth Miss Silver stories - it seemed like there were 50ish of them! Also mentioned, the Simon Brett novels. He has a Miss Marple type, tho' a respectable widow with links to the shadier side of life, when she needs to call on help. Plus he has the wonderful Charles Paris, another character who has adventures. He's middle aged, divorced, an actor with a paunch and can't drive. His career hit it's zenith with a small role on a soap opera, and since then, it has been downhill.

He gets by doing voiceover work and theatre work, which often entails doing behind the scenes work, as well, to get the job. I love that Charles is flawed. His ex wife is a headmistress and he sometimes has to beg lifts from.her...

He's not some unbelievable action man and I get a smile from him..

I would go and look for any other books not mentioned, but I can't get in the room of fiction.

As an active animal rescue person, I am very fond of Dangerous Davies, who rescues a huge dog and lives in fear of it, is bullied by it, but is too kind hearted to abandon it. It would be too unbelievable to have him with a rescue dog that becomes his mainstay. Instead he has to try to find friends who haven't yet been terrorised by his dog, who will take it while he is on the case.

The tv series starring Peter Davison, (Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small, and a Dr Who), is very different from the book, with a charming dog and a reasonable ex wife. The books are SO much better and raise a wry smile and even a chuckle.

Just thought, have you read the original Father Brown stories?

I recall a locked room in one of those stories, tho I think it MUST be 45 or 50 years, since I read them!

I enjoy G. K. Chesteron's Father Brown, too. The current PBS series is based on the characters instead of adapting the original stories, but my sister and I still watch it.

I agree about the Miss Silver series. Not only do I have all of the books, but my 4th cat (a long-haired silver tabby) was named Miss Silver. (Ms. Wentworth appears to have been serious about discouraging blackmail. I don't recall a single blackmailer surviving.)

Try G.M. Malliet or Cara Black

Just learning how to do this -- is way out of date so I don't think you can be found-

Try Deborah Crombie... lovely police procedural series with a cozy feeling set in various locales in England... wonderful maps of the locations.

My husband and I are entranced with the novels by Peter May.Besides being good mysteries, there is much to learn by his location descriptions. Wish there were more books by him.