What to read after “The Burglar in the Closet” by Lawrence Block: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Bernie Rhodenbarr is a polite, skilled burglar who never hurts anyone and only steals from people who can afford it. Hired to steal a small blue box from a Manhattan apartment, he is still there when the police arrive and a dead body is found in the bedroom. To clear his name he has to work out how the murder was done.
Finlay Donovan is a broke suspense novelist and mother of two. Discussing a plot with her agent, she is mistaken for a contract killer and offered a job. When the wrong man dies, she has to dispose of a body and solve the case before the police do.
Molly Gray, a hotel maid who likes everything neat and exact, finds a wealthy guest dead in his bed. Her odd manner and a string of misunderstandings make the police treat her as the main suspect, so she begins her own careful investigation to clear her name.
Vera Wong runs a quiet, failing tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. Finding a dead man on her floor, she decides the police will bungle it, takes charge of the case and invites the victim's circle to tea, feeding them and questioning them until the truth spills out.
Publicity agent Agatha Raisin retires early to a Cotswold village and enters a baking contest to win over her new neighbours. When a judge dies after eating her quiche, she must clear her name by finding the real killer, whether the village likes it or not.
Precious Ramotswe opens Botswana's first detective agency for ladies, working from a small office in Gaborone. With patience and common sense she takes on a cheating husband, a missing father and a con man, and begins to find her own place in the world.
Editor Susan Ryeland receives the manuscript of the ninth Alan Conway mystery, but the last chapters are missing and the author is dead. As she reads the country-house puzzle inside the book, the writer's real quarrels and the missing pages draw her into a case of her own.
Nero Wolfe is lured out of his brownstone to a gathering of the world's great chefs, and one of them is poisoned. When the killer turns toward Wolfe himself, he and Archie Goodwin must sort through the guests of a secretive culinary society to name the murderer.
In the village of Three Pines, the body of a well-liked woman is found in the woods with an arrow through her heart. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is drawn into a community where old friendships and hidden resentments make almost everyone a suspect.
When Judith Potts hears a shot while swimming in the Thames near her home, the police see nothing strange. She teams up with a dog walker and a vicar's wife to investigate, and the three amateur sleuths begin to uncover the town's secrets.
Four friends in a retirement village meet weekly to look over unsolved crimes, until a murder happens on their doorstep. As the bodies add up, they use a lifetime's worth of skill and nosiness to work the case the police cannot close.
Poet Richard Cadogan arrives in Oxford, finds a woman's body in a toyshop and is knocked out. When he returns with the police the shop has become a grocer's. With his friend, eccentric professor Gervase Fen, he hunts for the vanished corpse and the trick behind the impossible scene.
When wealthy Emily Inglethorp is fatally poisoned at her country estate, the household is sealed off with a killer among the guests. Captain Hastings, home from the war, brings in his old acquaintance Hercule Poirot, a Belgian refugee detective, to work out who could have reached her locked bedroom.
Lord Peter Wimsey is stranded by floods in the fenland village of Fenchurch St Paul over New Year. Months later a battered body is found in a newly opened grave, and Wimsey must read the village's bell-ringing lore and an old jewel theft to give the dead man a name.
Colonel Protheroe is widely disliked in the village of St Mary Mead, so when he is found shot in the vicarage study almost everyone has a motive. As the police chase obvious suspects, the observant spinster Miss Marple follows the quiet gossip and small deceits of her neighbours to the truth.
At a country house party, the host's brother is found shot in a locked room and the host has vanished. Antony Gillingham, a guest with a taste for detective stories, and his friend Bill play at being Holmes and Watson, poking into the household's secrets before the police arrive.
A quiet Catholic priest with a mild manner and an eye for human nature solves impossible crimes that baffle the police. Across twelve stories he uncovers murderers, thieves and impostors, often relying on ordinary details that everyone else has overlooked.
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, a chemistry-obsessed girl with a bicycle and a talent for poisons, finds a dying man in the cucumber patch of her family's crumbling English manor and sets out to solve the murder before the police can.
Twelve stories follow London's most observant detective and his friend Dr Watson as they untangle impossible crimes, strange clients and quiet suburban mysteries from their rooms on Baker Street.
Simon Templar, known as the Saint, lives by his own rules and targets men who have grown rich on crime. Charming and unbothered by the law, he arranges clever robberies and swindles that turn the tables on villains, sometimes leaving the money with their victims. Three adventures follow his schemes, his quick disguises and the police who would like to see him behind bars.
Michael Smith has not spoken since a violent event in his childhood. As a teenager he discovers he can open almost any lock, a talent that draws criminals who need a safecracker. His skill also brings him to Amelia, and protecting her pulls him into an elaborate con he cannot easily escape.
When a prosecutor is found murdered in her apartment, her colleague Rusty Sabich is assigned the case. He had an affair with her, and as evidence turns against him, he is charged with the murder. His trial becomes a battle over memory, ambition and the stories people tell themselves.
Parker, a career thief, is shot and left for dead after a heist by his own crew. He walks back into New York with no money and one goal: recover his share from the men who betrayed him, even if that means taking on the organized crime outfit protecting them.
Arsène Lupin robs the rich with flawless manners and a wink, slipping past locked doors and out of police traps alike. A master of disguise who lives both as an elegant gentleman and as France's most wanted burglar, he steals jewels, paintings and secrets, and often turns his schemes against people who deserve it. The stories follow his ingenious thefts and the detectives who try to catch him.
What should I read after “The Burglar in the Closet”?
Start with “Burglars Can't Be Choosers”, “Finlay Donovan Is Killing It”, “The Maid”: they are the closest to “The Burglar in the Closet” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Burglar in the Closet” these are Gentleman Thief, Cozy Mystery, Morally Grey Character), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Finlay Donovan Is Killing It”, “The Maid”, “Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
