More like The Stone Cipher
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- Robert Langdon
series6 books2000
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The Robert Langdon novel series is named after Robert Langdon, the protagonist of the novels by American author Dan Brown. Langdon is portrayed as a Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology, a fictional field related to the study of historic symbols, which is not methodologically connected to the actual discipline of semiotics. Brown's novels that feature the lead character also include historical themes and Christianity as motifs, and as a result have generated controversy. Brown states on his website that his novels are not anti-Christian, and that he is on a "constant spiritual journey" himself.
- The Devil in Velvet
John Dickson Carrstandalone novel1951
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The Devil in Velvet, first published in 1951, is a detective story by American writer John Dickson Carr. This novel is both a mystery and a historical novel, with elements of the supernatural.
- Sally Lockhart
series4 books1985
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Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart quartet follows a resourceful, unconventional heroine navigating Victorian London - a sharpshooting, mathematically gifted young orphan who builds an improbable career as a financial consultant against the era's expectations for women. The Ruby in the Smoke opens with Sally investigating her father's death and a mysterious jewel; the following novels widen out into fraud, opium-trade crime, and international intrigue, tracking Sally's evolving relationships, including with the journalist Daniel Goldberg, across four Victorian-set mysteries.
- Lord Darcy
series15 books1964
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Lord Darcy centers on Randall Garrett's investigator of the same name, a detective working an alternate history where functional magic stands in for our world's technology. Working alongside his forensic-sorcerer partner, Darcy solves closed-room mysteries and political crimes across a run of short stories and novels. After Garrett's death, Michael Kurland continued the character with further Lord Darcy novels.
- Rivers of London
series32 books2011
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The Rivers of London series is a series of urban fantasy novels by English author Ben Aaronovitch, and comics/graphic novels by Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, illustrated by Lee Sullivan.
- Gaston Max
series4 books1915
completed
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Sax Rohmer's Gaston Max novels follow a Parisian detective skilled in disguise, beginning with The Yellow Claw (1915), in which Max confronts a criminal mastermind known as Mr. King -- a villain in the mold of Rohmer's more famous creation, Dr. Fu Manchu. The loosely connected series continues across The Golden Scorpion and later books into the 1940s.
- Shadow Ticket
Thomas Pynchonstandalone novel2025
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Shadow Ticket is a novel by the American author Thomas Pynchon. It was announced by Penguin Press in April 2025 and published in October the same year. The novel, which is set in 1932, centers on a Milwaukee private investigator who is set adrift in Hungary while tracking the heiress to a Wisconsin cheese fortune.
- The Golden
Lucius Shepardstandalone novel1993
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Deviating from traditional tales that feature lonely vampires who prowl through human society in search of victims or solace, this account of vampires flourishing in their own "inhuman society" takes place in the year 1860, when their centuries-long breeding experiments have finally produced "The Golden," a mortal whose blood is perfect and powerful. Mobilized by the news of this discovery, aristocratic vampire clans arrive at the looming Castle Banat, where they plan to partake of the sublime blood. To their shock, the guests find that The Golden, a young girl, has been brutally murdered and her blood already drained. The story also follows the Inspector Michael Beheim—a recent vampire—assigned to track down the killer. Recounted in full 19th-century literary style with gothic elements and foreshadowing, the inspector navigates his way through the vampire world and the crime therein.
- Fata Morgana
William Kotzwinklestandalone novel1977
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From the flaps of the Knopf first edition: "In Fata Morgana a celebrated novelist turns conjurer to bring us a supremely theatrical magic show - a rich exotic entertainment of crime, treble-trickery, and legerdermain, with Europe as its stage and the golden leaders of the Uppercrust and the Underworld as its players. The time and place are Paris, 1861 - the extravagant capital of Louis Napoleon and his Empress Eugenie, the gaudy, blatant public arena of Great Whores and fabulous charlatans; the treacherous private labyrinth of Police Inspector Paul Picard and the human prey he stalks. Picard is a hunter of the purest instincts, with an appetite for the ladies, a taste for lemon tarts, and a policeman's nose for hard realities. As the book opens he is on his way to the Opera, for music and murder: among the guests is as elegant a killer as ever sliced his way through Parisian high society, and on his arm is the young woman he means to decapitate tonight. A strange encounter with them precipitates Picard into a new and (apparently) trivial assignment - a case that is fated to disrupt and then transform, irrevocably, his life. At first it seems routine: a man - Ric Lazare - has recently arrived in Paris and in a short time has captured the jaded attention and the favors of the entire city. His aura of opulence, his bewitching wife, Rene, and, above all, his unearthly fortune-telling machine have won him entree to the salons (and the bank vaults) of the most dazzling leaders of society, including, it is whispered, the Emperor himself. But, who - and what - is Lazare? Is he a crook? A master of illusions? A real magician? Or - more terrible - a reincarnation from an Older World? To find the answer, Picard must follow the thread of the man's past. His quest takes him from Paris to Vienna, Nuremberg, Budapest, and on to the dark, menacing valleys and steppes of eastern Hungary, uncovering a trail of deceit and violent death: a fabled toy maker driven to destroy himself and a lifetime's priceless creations... a man ruthlessly killed over a dice game... a beautiful woman purchased at auction, then stolen away... the sudden death of a priest. Beset by intimations of his own mortality, by a sense of inexplicable entrapment in a malign world of mechanical and deadly playthings, by a slowly suffocating conviction that he is undertaking a journey he has made before, Picard, caught up in the quickening pace, returns to Paris - and to a terrifying confrontation with his quarry and his own destiny."
- The Supernatural Enhancements
Edgar Canterostandalone novel2014
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The Supernatural Enhancements is a 2014 horror / mystery novel and the English language literary debut of Spanish cartoonist and author Edgar Cantero. The work was released on August 12, 2014, through Doubleday; the author also co-translated it to Spanish as El factor sobrenatural, published by Minotauro in May 2015. It is an epistolary novel, whose story is told via diary entries, recordings, notes, letters, and other personal effects that are arranged to appear as if they were collected and compiled at an undetermined point of time after the novel's events.
- The Black Box
E. Phillips Oppenheimstandalone novel1915
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A mystery novel involving "Electro-thought transference apparatus", which allows reading minds.
- The Book of Blood and Shadow
Robin Wassermanstandalone novel2012
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It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and a boyfriend she adored. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands. Chris was dead. Adriane couldn't speak. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also-according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone-a murderer. Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora's determined to follow the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. But Chris's murder is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.
- Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer
Katie Alenderstandalone novel2013
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While in Paris, France on a class trip, Colette Iselin enlists the help of her charming French tour guide to help uncover a possible connection between Marie Antoinette, a series of gruesome murders, and perhaps her own family history, and he also gives her insights into herself. While in Paris on a class trip, Colette Iselin enlists the help of her charming French tour guide to help uncover a possible connection between Marie Antoinette, a series of gruesome murders, and perhaps her own family history.
- The Night Sessions
Ken MacLeodstandalone novel2008
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The Night Sessions is a 2008 novel by Scottish writer Ken MacLeod. Set in the year 2037, the novel follows Edinburgh police officers investigating the murder of a priest in a world in which religious believers are a small and marginalized minority. The novel won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel in 2008.
- The House Saphir
Marissa Meyerstandalone novel2025
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Mallory Fontaine is a fraud. Though she comes from a long line of witches, the only magic she possesses is the ability to see ghosts, which is rarely as useful as one would think. She and her sister have maintained the family business, eking out a paltry living by selling bogus spells to gullible buyers and conducting tours of the infamous mansion where the first of the Saphir murders took place. Mallory is a self-proclaimed expert on Count Bastien Saphir—otherwise known as Monsieur Le Bleu—who brutally killed three of his wives more than a century ago. But she never expected to meet Bastien's great-great grandson and heir to the Saphir estate. Armand is handsome, wealthy, and convinced that the Fontaine Sisters are as talented as they claim. The perfect mark. When he offers Mallory a large sum of money to rid his ancestral home of Le Bleu's ghost, she can’t resist. A paid vacation at Armand’s country manor? It’s practically a dream come true, never mind the ghosts of murdered wives and the monsters that are as common as household pests. But when murder again comes to the House Saphir, Mallory finds herself at the center of the investigation—and she is almost certain the killer is mortal. If she has any hope of cashing in on the payment she was promised, she’ll have to solve the murder and banish the ghost, all while upholding the illusion of witchcraft. But that all sounds relatively easy compared to her biggest learning to trust her heart. Especially when the person her heart wants the most might be a murderer himself.
- Languedoc Trilogy
series3 books2005
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Kate Mosse's Languedoc Trilogy opens with Labyrinth, alternating between a present-day archaeologist in southern France and a woman living through the Cathar crusades eight centuries earlier, both entangled with the same hidden, grail-like relic. Sepulchre and Citadel repeat the dual-timeline structure with different centuries and protagonists, all tied to the same Languedoc region. The books share setting and structural device rather than a continuous cast.
