If you like John Connolly ....

I love John Connolly's Charlie Parker series (although I found the last couple not quite as good as the first ones) and I'm looking for books in a similiar style and I'm beginning to wonder if I've already found and read them all! Anyone got any good recs therefore in the crime/horror/supernatural genre. Please, no self-published authors to rec their own books on this thread, just published authors I could get from a library. Any and all recs welcome.

Lovely to get to get teeth into new character - have you tried Walter Mosely's Easy Rawlins - he is a great character and I love the period detail.

Sounds intriguing. I'll try and get the first of the series and give it a go.

I agree that John Connolly's gone off the boil of late. His earlier books were excellent - I love The White Road but in some ways his very first, Every Dead Thing, had the best story. Took years to write apparently.

I'm not a supernatural/horror expert, but in the crime fiction genre there are a few that stand out if you like Charlie Parker. One would be the character of Jack Caffery by Mo Hayder - there are five in the series so far but the first two are the best imho - Birdman and The Treatment. Chelsea Cain's debut novel Heartsick has some excellent character development, and it borders on the horror genre at times. Recommended.

Oh and you really should try The Twelve by Stuart Neville - that's the closest I can think of to JC. Based in Northern Ireland, it's about a former IRA assassin dealing with the ghosts of his past. I'm sure you'll like that a lot.

Yes, I loved The White Road. Even the title alone seems incredibly evocotive for some reason, but nothing blew me away like the first - Every Dead Thing. I adore Angel/Louis, and for some reason they were better in the earlier novels although there was less of them.
i've read the Mo Hayder books and the Chelaea Cain (Gretchen Lowell was almost a bit too much even for me!), but not the Neville, so thank you for that suggestion. I notice there's a Kindle edition too - if my local library doesn't have it (and as I'm at the butt end of South Island New Zealand that's usually the case) I can Kindle it. My new addiction. Thanks.

I totally agree with you about the earlier jc novels being better than the later ones. I was really looking forward to reading the latest one and was slightly disappointed. Not that it's not a good book, it's just that it didn't live up to the standard of the earlier ones. I've been looking for something similar for a while, but not had any luck. It seems to me, he has a quite unique writing style and almost creates a sub-genre.

So many writers come out with a great debut novel but fail to maintain that greatness in subsequent offerings. It's frustrating. Quite a few write a debut novel intending it to be a standalone, then, inspired by its success, turn it into a series. I think Chelsea Cain made a mistake in stringing out her Archie/Gretchen relationship to anything more than one book. Tess Gerritsen originally wrote The Surgeon as a standalone, and now, about eight years later and almost as many in the series later, can't seem to write anything else - and has suffered imho. John Connolly has done better than most, partly because I think a series was always his original intention, but the problem is that we kind of know what to expect now, and it's hard to really inject some new life into it.

One writer in the crime fiction genre who I think has maintained his standard better than most is RJ Ellory, who always writes standalones. Val McDermid is inconsistent but to be fair she's been around a long time and has achieved deservedly high respect. I fear her best days are over, however, peaking a decade ago with A Place of Execution.

Try Michael Marshall -The Straw Men. Seriously creepy and the closest to John Connolly that I can think of.
I'll second the recommendation for Stuart Neville's The Twelve -I'm looking forward to his next book.

That's a great way to put it - his own sub-genre. Maybe I'm on a lost cause trying to find something as good. Like Pundit says, some writers can come up to such greatness occassionally, but to sustain it seems to be very hard. I've not tried any RJ Ellory for some reason so that's a good suggestion, thanks.

Ah, I told a lie - I have read a RJ Ellory as I read "A Quiet Belief In Angels" and loved it. I'm one of those very shallow people who likes to chose books by their title and/or cover. How could anyone resist that title? I shall ferret out some more of his from the library. Any suggestions for which ones would be good to start with?

They're all good, but I do have a fondness for A Quiet Vendetta. Buy the whole lot (about 7 or 8 I think) - it will be money well spent.

Ah, the good old days when I used to be able to buy books. Books are more expensive than houses in New Zealand (I exagerate slightly but there's an element of truth to this). I'm not sure who could afford to buy them here! It's library or nothing these days. For example from an online bookseller A Quiet Vendetta is $23.79, which is about £11 with today's rotten exchange rate. I see Amazon have it from a bookseller for just over £4. But now I've just booked it from the library for free, so it's not all bad! It looks intriguing, thanks for the suggestion.

Agee with Bookworm79 that Micheal Marshall is the closest you are gonna get to the John Connolly crime thriller with a supernatural edge.

Yes, I've read his first and our library is waiting to get copies of his later ones in. I've just finished The Ghosts of Belfast (called Twelve in the UK) by Stuart Neville and it's superb. It's not quite as lyrical as early John Connolly and the supernatural elements aren't handled in the same manner, but it's certainly a tense thriller I'd highly recommend.

I enjoyed Harlan Coben's stand alone novels. The atmosphere created just draws you in so you cannot put the books down.
Also one to possibly try but only his earlier books such as the Ninja is Eirk van Lustbader - title is crappy i know, the vein of writing though not as good as Connolly is very similar.

How about John Sandford? Completely under-rated in the UK but a fantastic writer who should be much much better known. Try is 'Prey' series featuring Lucas Davenport.

Yes, I've just got his books for my Kindle and he's next on the reading list when I finish my marathon Jack Reacher read (I'm rereading the whole series in order). Sandford does look intriguing.... I've also just ordered the lastest Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones. I love his whole series.