You Finished Alex Cross.
What Now?

An ex-military police investigator, drifting across America, who keeps finding himself at the centre of other people's serious problems.

The lone-detective version of Alex Cross: complete competence, total focus, a man you want absolutely on your side. Child's plotting has the same page-turn momentum; Reacher himself is one of crime fiction's great creations.

LAPD detective Hieronymus Bosch is obsessively dedicated to the dead — specifically to closing cold cases and getting justice for victims everyone else has forgotten.

The literary version of Alex Cross's intensity. Connelly's prose is tighter, the police procedure more meticulous, and Bosch's psychology is among the richest in crime fiction. If you loved Cross's dogged commitment, Bosch delivers it at a deeper register.

Criminalist Lincoln Rhyme is a quadriplegic genius who solves crimes through forensic analysis, working with field detective Amelia Sachs from his Manhattan apartment.

The forensic intelligence of Alex Cross pushed further — Rhyme literally cannot leave his chair, so every breakthrough is purely intellectual. The Bone Collector is one of the best series openers in crime fiction.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec investigates murders in and around Three Pines, a village that shouldn't exist on any map — and where everyone has something to hide.

The psychological depth of Alex Cross matched with literary prose. Gamache, like Cross, is a detective who leads with empathy rather than force. The series is slower and warmer, but the murderers are just as chilling.

Sports agent and reluctant investigator Myron Bolitar keeps finding himself entangled in crimes connected to his clients, his past, and his complicated relationships.

The same breakneck plotting as Patterson with more emotional texture and dry wit. Coben's twists are among the best in commercial thriller fiction.

Anna Fox is agoraphobic and hasn't left her Manhattan home in months. Then she sees something she shouldn't through her neighbour's window.

The confined perspective and psychological cat-and-mouse of the best Alex Cross novels, pushed into classic Hitchcockian territory. One of the most satisfying twists in recent thriller fiction.

A former US intelligence agent, living in anonymity, is pulled back in to track a terrorist who has synthesised a smallpox variant — a bioweapon with the potential to end civilisation.

The global stakes and relentless momentum of Patterson's best work, at literary length and with exceptional research. One of the most accomplished debut thrillers of the 2010s.