Looking for a new Series

[Spot]

Hey,

Ive been picking at different thriller novels but cant find one that sticks... Im looking for a good series with character development in each novel, not some character where you can pick up the 4th or 5th book in the series and understand him/her 100%

an example of a great series i read and have yet to find anything as good was greg ruckas "Atticus Kodiak" Novels...

anyone have any suggestions

[Greg Hatcher]

anyone have any suggestions

I ALWAYS have suggestions for stuff like this.

First of all, if you like Kodiak, you really ought to like his spiritual forefather, Travis McGee. (http://home.earthlink.net/~rufener/) These were great, great books by John D. MacDonald. The link takes you to a pretty good fan web page that will give you more information. The books are best read in order but really any of the first five are a good start. Just don't skip to the end too fast... the last six or seven really need to be read last, and in order, there are several arcs that tie up pretty neatly with the last one.

A different setting entirely but very much the same dark, emotionally violent vibe as the Kodiak books are Laurie King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes (http://www3.sympatico.ca/mudthehut/beekeepr.html#abbooks) novels, about the middle-aged Holmes and the young girl genius he takes under his wing. These are amazing books, the more so if you are a fan of the originals, because nothing is contradicted, yet at the same time they are absolutely fresh and new. The Beekeeper's Apprentice is possibly my favorite book of all time.

These aren't as deep as some of the others listed but I love them anyway -- the original Matt Helm (http://members.aol.com/MacBorden/intro.html) novels by Donald Hamilton. forget the horrible movies -- this is James Bond if he was written by Mickey Spillane. Dark, violent books, narrated in the first person by Helm, a coldly unrepentant government assassin... yet somehow they also manage to be sardonically hilarious.

And for the same kind of grim, emotionally turbulent books as Rucka's, the real master of this was Ross MacDonald, and his tales of Lew Archer. (http://www.thrillingdetective.com/archer.html) These are probably the only mystery/thriller books that can be called literature without getting any argument from any quarter. They are so dense and layered that if you read more than two in a row you'll be exhausted. The Chill still blows me out of my chair and I've read it five or six times. There is a recurring theme -- almost always Archer has to resolve a crime from years past to solve the one in the present -- but it never falls into formula. If you have a long car ride somewhere and a cassette player you really ought to check out the amazing adaptation done for radio (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1572700491/103-6301937-2695014?v=glance) of Sleeping Beauty with Harris Yulin as Archer.

There's a start for you, anyway.

[Karl J. Barnes]

On the fantasy realm of hard-boiled detectives, try Glen Cook's The Garret Files , a nice mixture of magic,mystery and comedy.

[berk]

Raymond Chandler. Start with the Big Sleep, or (I'm told) the early short stories, and read them in order.

Rext Stout. His Nero Wolfe series is very long, spanning about 50 years or more, but they're all quick and entertaining reads. They also feature two of the best genre characters ever imagined, Wolfe and his henchman, Archie Goodwin.