Hello Professor,
I love all of your articles on the Strike series. I have read the series several times now and I’m dying for the next one. The detective genre is completely out of my wheelhouse as I usually read epic fantasy like Robert Jordon or Brandon Sanderson. But I’m enjoying this so much I would like to read more like it and I was wondering if you had any books or authors to recommend that are similar to the Strike series.
Hope you are having a great weekend.
Phil
Great question, Phil! Here are five recommendations for murder mystery books with a Cormoran Strike resonance:
(1) John Fairfax’s Benson and De Vere courtroom dramas
We’ll be discussing the first, Summary Justice, here beginning tomorrow! Go here for more on these stories and their relationship with Strike.
(2) Ian Rankin’s John Rebus novels
Cormoran Strike is in several ways Rowling’s re-imagining of Rankin’s John Rebus but with him set in London rather than Edinburgh and as a private detective rather than police officer. ‘Ian Rankin and Cormoran Strike‘ is a good first stop to learn about these two.
(3) P. D. James’ Cordelia Gray thrillers
There are only two, alas, but it is hard to overstate the influence of Cordelia Gray on Galbraith’s Robin Ellacott. Check out the Duchess of Malfi debts discussed here.
(4) Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books
I’m just starting Case Histories but, having read Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Life after Life, and A God in Ruins, I’m more than confident that Rowling is a great fan of Atkinson and that Cormoran Strike and Jackson Brodie would recognize each other as types.
(5) Boris Akunin’s Sister Pelagia mysteries
Akunin is a treasure whose Erast Fandorin novels — each a different genre (I kid you not) — are an international sensation and delight. His much shorter series on a plucky Orthodox nun in Tsarist Russia who is given leave to re-join the world in disguise to investigate crimes in obedience to her bishop are personal favorites despite its train wreck of a finish to this trilogy.
I hope that helps! If others have recommendations, please click on the ‘Leave a Comment’ button up by the post headline and share your favorites in the comment boxes below!
Tomorrow, the bracketing structure of Summary Justice…
Can’t certainly say anything relevant, here, but was pleased to see you discuss Boris Akunin – only one of whose novels I’ve read (so far?), in Dutch translation – not a Pelagia, which are new to me, and sound intriguing – but I can’t remember which (!). However, having read it, and wondering what it was like, I happened to encounter two collaborative novels by Robert Eustace and L.T. Meade, The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899) and The Sorceress of the Strand (Madame Sara) (1903), which seemed similar. (This may have come from wanting to know more about Eustace, who later collaborated with Dorothy L. Sayers on The Documents in the Case (1930).)