Recommend books!

[telophase]

So. Suspense/thriller sorts of things with conspiracy theories, ciphers, history, etc. Like DaVinci Code, only well-written (at least in comparison). I have read The Name of the Rose and it is too well-written as I would like this to be have-a-cold and need to be lightly entertained type reading.

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Comments

[movingfinger]

Hm, did you ever read the YA Sinbad and Me?

Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand sort of fits. The Anubis Gates ditto...

[telophase]

No, I haven't read S&M - sounds interesting. I've read Waking the Moon and didn't like it that much, but it was so long ago I can't remember why. I have read the Powers book (woo, he's going to be a guest at next year's ConDFW! *plug plug*)

[movingfinger]

Sinbad & Me is very very good. There is a sequel but I can't remember the title; it's a weaker book, but still entertaining. But the first is an underrated classic.

If you like Count of Monte Cristo-ish, Dumas-homage stories, you might like the Captain Alatriste stories, but that is not actually what you're asking for here. I enjoy the suspense-mystery-cypher kind of stories a lot yet I can't seem to think of any.

[telophase]

I've read some other of Perez-Reverte's books and enjoyed them, although not the Captain Alatriste series. I now note that inexplicably the first one is not available on the Kindle, yet the fourth and fifth are...

[thistleingrey]

Might be too much on the Brown end, but perhaps The Rule of Four by Caldwell and Thomason.

[telophase]

I've downloaded the sample to my Kindle to check out - it sounds pretty much like what I'm looking for. :)

[kate_nepveu]

_The Eight_ by Katherine Neville, with the caveat that I was a teenager when I read it and I have no idea how it would hold up. Centuries-spanning conspiracies revolving around a very special chess set.

Is Tim Powers' _Declare_ too dense? Secret history of the Cold War with, of course, magic.

[telophase]

I've read The Eight (and it's not-so-good sequel). I haven't read that Powers, yet. Thanks!

[kate_nepveu]

I didn't expect the sequel to be any good, and so I'm glad you confirmed it and saved me the trouble!

[telophase]

Yeah, it seemed like play-by-numbers instead of intricately plotted, and the final answer to all the puzzles turned out to be stupid.

[rachelmanija]

Houses of Stone, by Barbara Michaels. Fluffy thriller about the discovery of a manuscript by an early feminist poet. The romance element is perfunctory and Barbara Michaels has written better books, but it's entertaining and fits your criteria fairly well.

Smilla's Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg, is not historical and is somewhat literary, but otherwise fits the bill exactly, with conspiracies, a pretty bad-ass female protagonist, a mystery, scientific detection, etc.

Have you read John Le Carre?

[coraa]

On a similar vein to Houses of Stone: Barbara Michaels' alter ego, Elizabeth Peters, wrote some mysteries that might suit your needs. Her first couple of Jacqueline Kirby mysteries are thriller-ish historical mysteries (The Seventh Sinner, set in Rome and dealing with Roman history and catacombs; The Murders of Richard III, dealing with, well, Richard III), and her Vicky Bliss mysteries are art history thrillers (Borrower of the Night, Street of the Five Moons, Silhouette in Scarlet, and Trojan Gold, among others). Light, but a lot of fun.

[telophase]

Iv'e snagged the Kindle samples of Seventh Sinner and Murders of Richard III, thanks!

[telophase]

Thanks. I've not read Le Carre.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you'll be shocked, shocked to hear that I heartily second the rec for Smilla's Sense of Snow -- the book and its eponymous narrator are enduring favorites of mine. *koff* It's one of the most arresting first-person narratives I've ever read -- although I must warn you that the final third of the book, and the ending, really frustrate some readers who liked the beginning. Basically, while the book has a lot of murder-mystery and thriller elements, it really isn't trying to play by the genre rules for either. I don't mind, because for me the real pleasure of the book is being inside the head of the intensely snarky and cynical narrator, but YMMV.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Everything I usually rec in this genre is probably too well-written.

Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 might do you. It's kind of slapstick and has a conspiracy by people whom I had long suspected were plotting something. I can't remember whether it goes into depressing mode. Also, very much the shortest Pynchon and the least opaque.

These are movies, but the National Treasure films, while of course totally ludicrous, avoid being quite as horribly written as Dan Brown and are ludicrous in a way I personally find entertaining. If you are fond of Nicolas Cage in chew-the-scenery mode you could do worse.

Have you read G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday? I am quite fond of it.

I'm sorry, I seem to have either 'actual literature' or 'total fucking dreck' in this category.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D Well, I can always save literature recs until I'm no longer braindead from a cold.

I've seen the first National Treasure movie but not the second. I may check if it's available via streaming on Netflix this weekend.

I've not read the Chesterton, but inexplicably Amazon seems to have a Kindle edition available for free, so I downloaded it. Thanks!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Public domain FTW!

I hope you enjoy it.

[longshot14.livejournal.com]

You might try _The Eight_. Might.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Read it. :D And the recent sequel, which wasn't as good.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

If stuff that's closer to slightly cozy mystery rather than suspense/thriller is OK, I'm quite fond of Iain Pears' art history mysteries (http://italian-mysteries.com/IPap.html) -- they're light and entertaining without being brainless, a nicely paced modest length for when you don't feel like tackling a 900-page doorstopper sort of book, and all the art-history stuff is geeky fun (also, an Italian friend I loaned them to said their depiction of politics and bureaucracy in Italy is remarkably authentic).

(Pears' non-genre historical novels, like An Instance of the Fingerpost, are also worth reading, but rather closer in feel and density to stuff like The Name of the Rose.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've read Fingerpost and liked it a lot, but not any of his art history mysteries - thanks!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I picked them up in the first place because I'd loved Fingerpost so much -- very very different tone and feel, but still quite enjoyable reads!

At least one of them, IIRC, also has a slightly DVC-ish angle involving artworks hiding evidence of ancient conspiracies...but alas, it's been long enough since I last read these that I don't recall which book it was in. (They're worth reading in order anyway for the sake of the changes in the careers and personal relationships of the main characters.)

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Cryptonomicon hits the history, conspiracy, and cipher buttons.. Don't know what you think of Neal Stephenson. If you haven't read him before he's fond of digressions.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I read that some time ago - it was a book that I enjoyed and read all the way through, but couldn't really follow it (yeah, strange, I know).

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Stephenson's like that. I think it took me three readings of The Diamond Age to really grasp the ending.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

What about Pratchett's Thud? I always sort of liked that one, and it's a good comfort read for me.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I may be pulling out the Pratchett this weekend if if the cold gets really bad. :) (Have you listened to any of the audio versions? The guy who reads the majority of them, Stephen Briggs, just absolutely nails VImes' voice, IMHO.)

I read that only incidentally when it involves sf

[estara.livejournal.com]

Martha Wells, Death of the Necromancer
C.J Cherryh, the last four books in the Foreigner/Atevi universe

is what I get off the top of my head

Re: I read that only incidentally when it involves sf

[telophase.livejournal.com]

thanks!

Re: I read that only incidentally when it involves sf

[estara.livejournal.com]

You're welcome and maybe I should say more precisely, the CURRENT last four books in the Foreigner/Atevi universe, ending with Deceiver just-released(from the time when the protagonist and his group return from their space trip and find the Atevi planet in political uproar.... not that there wasn't intrigue and suspense before and thriller-like action. The very first book, Foreigner, was strong in that).

The series is ongoing, wherelse the Wells book is self-contained, you only get a side-story with some familiar characters in the Ile-Rien trilogy later on.

[sparkylibrarian.livejournal.com]

Ariana Franklin's got some (extremely anachronistic but entertaining) mysteries, starting with Mistress of the Art of Death. Very anachronistic, did I mention? I enjoyed reading it once I started pretending it wasn't actually historical fiction. :)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I grabbed the Kindle sample. :)

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

John M. Ford's The Scholars of Night

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks!