I’ll start with one of my favorites: Crocodile on a Sandbank, Elizabeth Peters, (c) 1975. The Amelia Peabody mysteries. They’re a hoot.
And just to give you the idea that they don’t have to be totally period: The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith. Precious Rambotswe is the detective. It’s also a very good HBO series.
In total agreement with many of these authors. 🙂 Tey, Davis, Ellis Peters, George–all awesome!
A cute series (and fun author) I loved were the Peter Shandy series by Charlotte MacLeod. Nothing says “mysterious” more than a professor from an agricultural college. How Prof. Shandy deals with the annual Christmas Fair in his little college town in the first book had me crying I was laughing so hard! She was a wonderfully whimsical writer.
A more intense series I rather enjoy is from Val McDermid–British profiling.
Hurray, somebody else here is a Manning Coles fan! They’re a little hard to find, but worth a search, especially the first two. Also delightful, though not really a mystery, is his (their, “Coles” was actually two people) light novel _Duty Free_.
Sara Woods’ books featuring barrister Antony Maitland are worth looking for.
All Laurie King’s are good; _The Art of Detection_ is an astonishing tour de force.
Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles stories are good. Not quite cozies, I would say, a little to cynical perhaps in their view of the good old boy politics of central Texas small towns. Good herb recipes, too.
Dell Shannon/Elizabeth Linington/Lesley Egan wrote three sets of L.A. mysteries, the Lieutenant Mendoza police procedurals (though I have my doubts about some of the procedures), the Ivor Maddox/Sue Carstairs procedurals as Linington, and mysteries featuring lawyer Jesse Falkenstein and/or officer Vic Varallo under the Egan name.
A newer, long-running set of police “procedurals” (well, sort of) is the near-future “… In Death” books by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts) featuring Lieutenant Eve Dallas and a cast of dozens. I like these quite a bit, though I’m not a fan of the steamy scenes, which I sort of skim over. Unless of course I’m “reading” an audiobook, that doesn’t let you skim. They are up to around thirty now. Roberts is amazingly prolific. The most interesting entry is _Remember When_ by Nora Roberts *and* J.D. Robb. It is two novellas, the first is a present-day romantic suspense story about the aftermath of a diamond heist, and the second is an Eve Dallas tale fifty years later about the skullduggery that takes place surrounding the same diamonds, hidden all this time.
I read very few mystery-type novels, I’m almost exclusively into F&SF, but one author I’ve gotten to like is John Sanford, because he sets his novels in the north-central region of the US, rather then the popular-to-the-point-of-overdone coastal locales. I don’t know Minneapolis all that well, only passed through there a few times, but I do know the Wisconsin north woods that his stories occasionally stray into.