Amazon lists a few stand alone mysteries. If you go to the Stopyourkillingme website and pick a favourite author, it will give any written by them.

Thanks, Annpan! The Stop, You're Killing Me! site is a good one for browsing through, although I find it's most helpful when I already know a writer but rather unwieldy if I've forgotten or never heard of authors.

I learned a few things already from that site:
Five of Josephine Tey's books are actually part of a series with Alan Grant as the chief detective, including The Daughter of Time. I guess I forgot that because he's mainly unobtrusive. Only Brat Farrar, The Franchise Affair, and Miss Pym Disposes are actual stand-alones.
Only four of Georgette Heyer's mysteries are non-series, including three I've read: Footsteps in the Dark, Why Shoot a Butler?, and Penhallow (your favorite, Annpan?).
Between ten and twenty years ago, there was a spate of 'literary' mysteries that I wish I had paid more attention to or kept better notes. The only ones I can think of presently are Ron Hansen's Atticus, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, and Robert J. Begiebing's The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin. I liked all three of those, but I tried some of Hansen's and Atwood's other books that are also said to be mysteries; but I either didn't like them much or laid them aside.

I tend to like mysteries that are based on actual events but fictionalized, such as A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery. There was one written about ten years ago about some women killed, perhaps with a hatchet, on an island (I'm thinking it was off Maine) in the 19th or maybe early 20th century. I'm NOT so fond, though, of any speculative mystery about Lizzie Borden and whether she was innocent or guilty.

Well, why do you reckon stand-alone mysteries tend to get lost in readers' minds? They certainly do in mine, although I think the best stand-alones far outshine the individual installments of most series.

Harlan Coben writes some stand-alones. One that I read recently and which I thought quite good was Six Years.

You might also want to check the books by Linwood Barclay and Michael Koryta.

Pat

Here is a link that might be useful: Fantasic Fiction

I love both Ruth Rendell and P. D. James.....each book is a stand-alone, even if the inspector or whatever might be involved with the various books.

Reginald Hill has written several stand alones besides his Dalziel and Pascoe series.

Thanks, Pat, Phyllis, and Carolyn! Now I have some more authors to plug into the mystery search sites. I go through a mystery phase periodically, but unlike some of you I can't keep up with all the new authors or well-known writers and their newer books in the crime/mystery genre. I'm probably at least ten years behind most of you.

Phyllis, that's a good point about some mysteries being stand-alones in spite of a recurring detective or other characters. I never bothered to read Agatha Christie in order, for instance, and I don't think it much mattered that I didn't. That's the way with a lot of the classic series, I think, but the more modern series are written in such a way that it's harder to plop down in the middle of the series and get as much out of them, I find. I'm not willing to invest time and effort in locating all forty-eleven installments in a series so that I can read them in order; hence my preference for stand-alones.

Re literary mysteries: Does anyone recognize the bare bones plot/setting of the island hatchet-killing book I attempted to describe above? I recall that the author was female and at one time she was mentioned quite often here at RP. Heh! But that's probably like the customer asking bookshop staff about the mystery book written by the fellow whose photo on the back cover showed him wearing glasses and a hat.

Another literary mystery that got a lot of coverage by RPers at one time was about an unconventional detective with a neurological problem. It was a stand-alone, as I recall. I think it was Sarah Canary who said it was one of her all-time favorites. I miss Vicki! If she were to show up, I'm sure she could tell me the author and title, but maybe some of you know it too.

Friedag, I was surprised to read that Heyer's mysteries were in a couple of series. It is a long time since I read those and was more interested in the characters than the crime solving. I think this is why I like "Penhallow" as it isn't a mystery who-dun-it as we know who, how and why!
I have done some mental "fan fiction" on that one, set after the second world war, to send myself to sleep! I do that with a few of my favourite books and I suspect others here may do that too!
A couple of the Regency novels are stand alone mysteries too!
"The Tollgate" and "The Quiet Gentleman" spring to mind.

Freidag, you might enjoy The Alienist by Caleb Carr which takes place in New York when Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner. It was a bit gruesome for my tastes. Carr wrote a second book, but I don't really think it's a series.

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears is also a stand alone historical mystery.

You might also try Chris Bohjalian. He's one of my friend's favorite authors, and writes sort of suspense novels of people in unusual circumstances. I tried one and didn't find it my cup of tea, but I certainly see why some people enjoy his books.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson is a murder mystery/courtroom drama set during WWII in the pacific northwest.

There are some others floating around in my mind that I can't quite remember the title/author. When they come to the surface (generally in the middle of the night) I'll post again.

Merryworld's mention of Carr reminded me of John Dickson Carr who also wrote as Carter Dixon and was quite prolific. The books are old and some do use the same detective, but I don't believe any of them require prior knowledge. My favorite is The Burning Court which once gave me a very tense night. It's about a witch, and I am certainly not a believer, but it was one scary story, or at least it was when I was about 20.

I forgot The Dante Club by Mathew Pearl. It's set in 19th century Boston and has Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as characters. Again, the murders were a little too gruesome for my taste, but definitely an interesting book about the first American translation of the Divine Comedy.

Annpan, you suspected right in my case. I often exercise mental 'fan fic' myself; I think I always have with books that made profound impressions on me, yet didn't quite satisfy me in some way. For a long time I reimagined Rebecca because I hated No Name's timidity and I wanted to give her more spunk. I eventually gave that up because I realized so much of the story actually hinged on her wimpy character. She did get better toward the end of the book, but curiously in every 'sequel' I've read by other writers she reverts back to being a shrinking violet.

Why Penhallow with you, Annpan?

Merryworld, I think you might be right about The Alienist appealing to me, because I've liked other mysteries of that era and setting: The Waterworks by E. L. Doctorow, Scarlet Women by J. D. Christilian, and one titled The Cabinet of Curiosities by I forget, that I think is part of a series, maybe, but I liked it anyway. And thanks for the mentions of An Instance of the Fingerpost, Bohjalian, and Guterson. See, I would never have known they were mysteries or suspense without you telling me.

Perhaps one title that I queried about above has been identified: The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. I read the Amazon synopsis and the elements sound right, but I'm not sure if I ever read it or I just read quite a bit about it from RPers. It has mixed reviews at Amazon.

Carolyn, I remember reading some John Dickson Carr/Carter Dixon, but I don't recall The Burning Court. I like witchy stories! So, I'll be sure to look for that one.

Merryworld, The Dante Club could also be my speed. I'm a lot less affected by gruesomeness if I read it but don't actually see a depiction. Thanks for adding it!

Frieda, Penhallow is only one of my imagined sequels! Actually they wouldn't be novel length, more like a chapter about later events as some novelists like to do in their own books!
Spoiler alert.
I felt that Ray should have been cleared of the suspicion that he murdered his father. What I find unusual about this book is that the true culprit went free. Not how events were generally made to finish normally in books and films around that time. The guilty had to be found out and punished.
I remember seeing the film "Kind Hearts and Coronets" which ends
Spoiler alert again!
with the reprieved hero/villain leaving prison and then remembering he has left his memoirs (detailing his crimes) behind, inferring that he would be found out.
The audience were heard to say as they left the cinema that all he had to do was go back for them!
However it satisfied the censor and the censorous that he would be punished. Even in a black comedy, justice must prevail!

Annpan, I've been reading and following links to the Edgar Award winners. In 1956 when Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley was nominated, some of the committee members protested that it shouldn't be considered because it didn't 'play by the rules'. They were disgusted when it was voted a winner. I read it but didn't particularly like it, because I thought it was creepy to side with the completely amoral main character, which I guess is what Highsmith intended. In the late 1960s and early '70s I seem to remember a whole slew of those antihero-type crime/mystery novels and movies too. How things had changed in a couple of decades! I'm not sure they have changed back in cyclical fashion, but I'm thinking they probably haven't. Except, maybe, the cosy types. True?

One of my favorite imaginings is being 'Mary Sue', injecting myself into a story. Do you do that? I do it more with nonfiction mysteries, such as being on Palmyra Island in 1974, when Mac and Muff Graham had the misfortune of running into Buck Walker and Stephanie Stearns as recounted in the first half of Vincent Bugliosi's And the Sea Will Tell (Stephanie was given the pseudonym 'Jennifer Jenkins' in the book). I find it hard to believe that Stephanie really thought the Grahams disappeared while fishing and that she didn't suspect a thing. I've played scenarios over so many times in my mind, with me taking the part of Stephanie, but have never been able to work it out to my satisfaction.

I just remembered Martin Cruz Smith's Rose, a historical mystery set in the coal-mining town of Wigan, England. I enjoyed that one, but most so-called historicals seem to be modern-type mysteries that are projected into whatever era the writer fancies. That's okay, I suppose.

re 'Historical Mysteries'.
I just noticed in the w/end supplement of the 'Telegraph' a piece on five of the best historical mysteries and though I haven't read them all they might hit the spot.

The Daughter of Time - Josephine Tay

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

An Instance at the Fingerpost - Iain Pears

The Unburied - Charles Palliser

The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl

Friedag, no, I have never written myself into a book. I am always the author.
I agree that books seem to go in theme cycles and one would have to be psychic to know what will be in favour next. Perhaps the antihero will return, the dashing crook was very popular in the Twenties too.
How different now is the romance novel from the fifties when the heroines were innocent! I don't see that coming back though but as you say, cozies are still the same but now tend to have more females investigating the crimes as well as doing their every day work!

Hmm, Vee, the first thing I notice about that list, with the exception of Tey's The Daughter of Time, is the weighty consideration of male authors in a genre that appeals largely to female readers. And I mean 'weighty' with a dual definition: the male writers' books are often doorstoppers. I'm not looking for gender equality and PC nonsense, but I'm fresh off reading about the differences between men and women writers' and readers' habits, and one of the striking examples is in the historical mystery subgenre with around 70% women readers to 30% men readers favoring it or saying that they read it often. Women writers of historicals are followed avidly by women readers, especially in series, but the so-called 'great' literary historical mysteries, including stand-alones, are predominantly written by men. And if men readers are drawn to historicals, the writer is nearly always a man. I don't know what, if anything, can be made of such statistics other than publishing companies targeting and promoting these books with a particular audience in mind. Women readers are known to be more promiscuous in their reading habits. :-)

Annpan, I can't even think of a good mystery written recently that combines romance with mystery solving, unless it's some 'dysfunctional' feature of the plot. I loved the gothic suspense/mystery/romance novels that were popular mainly in the 1950s, '60s, and about halfway through the 1970s. Rereading some of them, I often now laugh at the contortions the writers had to go through to keep things 'clean' and innocent, but still interesting. But when the female characters were allowed to think about and 'do' sex, things changed, that's for certain. And, yeah, it's not likely to change back. Subtlety does not seem to be a valued quality nowadays. I've found that writers who try their hand at romantic suspense nowadays don't seem to know what subtlety means.

Do you have any romantic mysteries to recommend, classic or modern?

Freida, did the writer of your book on 'historical mysteries' give any eg's of women writers of that genre? Off hand I can't bring many/any to mind. And I'm presuming you/he/she don't include trashy stuff. I would be happy to read a book of that type but couldn't put up with dreadful historical 'clangers'. As for eg in one of C J Sansom's Shardlake mysteries set in the 1530's when he has the kitchen boy peeling potatoes.

Friedag, my favourite romance/mystery is Agatha Christie's "The Moving Finger" but as she also wrote romances it wasn't a stretch for her to include a love story with her mysteries and she does that in a couple of her other books. As does Heyer who also wrote romances, in "Duplicate Death" and others.
I suspect that recent romance/mysteries would be mainly in the stand alones rather than the series books. They would be able to follow the classic style of a romance better with the happy finish, don't you think?
I shall have to check my reading list for this type and get back to you. I have just woken up and need to get my brain to work properly!

Vee, the books I read with the statistics are Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (mentioned elsethread) and four books by Clive Bloom:
Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900, published in 2002;
Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory;
Gothic Horror: A Reader's Guide from Poe to King and Beyond; and
Literature, Politics and Intellectual Crisis in Britain Today.
I haven't got around to the American stats yet, thus the emphasis on British studies. When Napoleon supposedly characterized the English as a 'nation of shopkeepers' he could, I think, have described the English instead as a 'nation of archivists'. It goes back to Domesday, I guess.

Historical mystery seems to be a fluid subgenre. One source I read included Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird!! which I think is a stretch because the only mystery in it that I can think of is why Boo Radley stayed in his house all day and only went out at night. Others generally agree that historical mystery, as we know it today, began in the 1960s. Ellis Peters is often mentioned with her anachronistic detective, Brother Cadfael, as one of the first with a large following of readers (the books were written from 1977 to 1994). Some have given Dorothy Dunnett credit with The Lymond Chronicles (1961-1975). I don't agree because I think they are primarily historical novels with only occasional elements of mystery.

Some recent female writers of historical mysteries who have received praise and acclaim are Elisabeth Kostova (The Historian) and Australia's Kate Morton (The House at Riverton). There are others but my brain is not working too well right now. ;-(

I know what you mean about 'clangers', Vee. I thought I spotted a couple in The Historian. I actually liked the story Kostova told quite well, but the part I remember best is when she described a drive SOUTH down the Dalmatian coast with the Adriatic on the LEFT of the road. I've driven that breathtakingly beautiful and exhilaratingly perilous road and never once saw the Adriatic on the left-hand side, which would be inland, going south, or southeast more accurately. A look at any map can verify that. I don't know if it was just a mental blip on Kostova's part when she meant north instead of south, or right instead of left, and her editor wasn't familiar enough with the area to pick up the error. I fret too much, I suppose, about such errors because I'm sure I overlook many others. Some readers, though, just think it's being nitpicky. I feel I would've picked up the potato error in the Sansom book, as food history is one of my great interests, but perhaps not if I was in one of my skimming moods.

Frieda, I mentioned last month, I think, that I read Cry in the Night written early by Carolyn Hart before her Death on Demand Bookstore books became so popular, but only published in 2012. It is the old school damsel in distress type and I quite liked it, maybe more for the nostalgia than the book itself. I, too, dearly loved Mary Stewart, early Victoria Holt, Margaret Summers, Barbara Michaels, et. al.

Annpan, I don't remember you ever mentioning whether you read any of Mary Roberts Rinehart's books; have you? She's sometimes called America's Agatha Christie, although she pre-dated Christie . MRR's first book,The Circular Staircase, was published in 1908. MRR continued to write until the early 1950s, a few years before her death in 1958. She wrote both mysteries and romance, often working a bit of romance into her mysteries. Most of her mysteries were non-series. I discovered them when I was about ten years old and they remain favorites to this day, as I go on periodic binges of rereading them. And, yes, some of them are also my favorite 'fan fic' pastimes!

Critics, at one time (not so much anymore), loved to bash MRR for her "Had-I-But-Known" style and the fact that the narrators (not necessarily the solvers of the mysteries) were often elderly spinsters or 'maiden aunt' types of the well-to-do class (they didn't have jobs, took long holidays, had nice houses and servants). I think the critics were mainly grouchy old men who were jealous of MRR's success with her, admittedly, well-worn formula. The formula worked as MRR sold beaucoup books because there was the added fascination of the details she included in every story, such as the seemingly mundane way people used the telephone in the early part of the 20th century. They are real time capsules and I adore them.

My favorites are The Circular Staircase and The Yellow Room. There's another, though, that doesn't quite fit the formula, called The Case of Jennie Brice (pub. 1913). The setting is a very poor section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that flooded every spring by the confluence of the three great rivers of the region. The inhabitants, including the landlady of the boarding house where the mystery occurs, know that the ground floors of their houses will be inundated so just move everything up a floor and keep a painter tied to a bannister in the stair hall!! The book is barely longer than a short story, but it's so packed with details that I am fascinated every time I read it.

Carolyn, I definitely want to read Cry in the Night. Thanks for pointing it out. My mother and I have nostalgia fests when we argue which is the best of Stewart's books (Mama says Nine Coaches Waiting but I love The Moon-Spinners best, I think). Do you have a particular favorite? I remember you giving note to Phyllis A. Whitney's Seven Tears for Apollo. It's one of Mama's and my favorites, too. I reread it recently and found that it has held up quite well, perhaps surprisingly.

Frieda quite a few of the MRR books are available for the kindle and most of them are free. I read the one about Jennie Brice several years ago when I got my 1st kindle.

In the category of writers that includes Stewart & P. Whitney my favorite author was Norah Lofts. I especially enjoyed her series about The House, I think the 1st one was called The House at Old Vine.
I read them years ago and then started to collect the old hardbacks when I found them to reread, hopefully in order. I loved the history of the house and the people living there.

Pat

I thought of including Phyllis Whitney in my list of Gothics authors, but her later books became so formulaic that I went off her, as I did Victoria Holt. I did love Holt's Mistress of Mellyn.

It's hard for me to pick a favorite Stewart--I like both Nine Coaches Waiting and The Moon-Spinners. I also like Nine Coaches Waiting and My Brother Michael, maybe because my baby brother is named Michael.

I also really like Helen MacInnes who is another author who wrote stand alones, mostly Nazi or Communist spy stories. You can't depend on her for happy endings, though.

I tend to blame my love of travel on those adventurous girls of the Gothics and books set in exotic places.

Frieda, no, I haven't read MRR to my recollection.
Has anyone mentioned Madeleine Brent? Really Peter O'Donnell, author of Modesty Blaise books but these are mystery/romances. I checked and saw that there are a couple I don't recall reading. The heroines usually have unusual background stories and have to find out who/what they are etc.
Thrilling stuff!

I enjoy all the Mary Stewart mystery books but particularly like "The Gabriel Hounds" not only a lovely ending but a dog gets rescued too! Ahhh!

Pat, did you notice anything odd or odd-of-whack about your Kindle Edition of The Case of Jennie Brice? My friend first read it on her Kindle and was quite disgruntled with me for recommending it, saying that the mystery was never solved and it didn't make any sense! I was mystified because I didn't remember any such thing. I then read it on Project Gutenberg and right at the end there seemed to be some pages that had been omitted, leaving everything confusing and seemingly abruptly tied up. I dug out my old paperback copy and verified that someone had done a poor job of transferring the printed book to computer and both Project Gutenberg and the Kindle Edition had picked up the BAD JOB! I hope it was eventually corrected, because it's a shame enough to turn a reader off with a false impression of a very good book and author.

I loved Norah Lofts as well. The ones I remember best, though, seem to have been just straight historical novels, not much mystery or suspense; e.g., Jassy, The Lute Player, and others.

Carolyn, I know what you mean about P. Whitney and Victoria Holt getting formulaic. I eventually gave up on them, too; but in their early days, they were something! I especially liked Whitney's The Trembling Hills (the one set in San Francisco) and Window on the Square. I read Helen MacInnes and there was another similar female writer of thrillers...can't think of her name or the titles of any of her books. Did you like M. M. Kaye's Death in (insert exotic locale) books? Yep, they were enough to make me want to see Zanzibar and the Andaman Islands, giving me a real travel bug.

When my niece was about fifteen, I turned her onto Mary Stewart by giving her The Moon-Spinners, Wildfire at Midnight, and The Ivy Tree. She thought the vociferous debates her mother, grandmother, other aunt and I had were 'better than a tennis match'. (It's an old family tradition to team up and argue about books; I listened in the same way to my female relatives when I was my niece's age.) My niece thought we were hyping Mary Stewart when we said that the new arrival of a Stewart book was enough to nearly cause a riot with readers wanting to grab immediately the one or two copies the library got. A reader was given a week to read it and there was no renewal (until the excitement faded about six months later), and the list of next-in-line readers would run for several pages. It was tantalizing and frustrating that SOME readers couldn't read faster. The only similar experience my niece had was with the Harry Potter books. Btw, my niece liked the Stewart books except for, she says, their blandness!

Uh-oh, I feel a gothic suspense/romance mood coming on. My niece also asked me one time: "Why is it called Gothic romance when there's hardly any romance in it?"

Frieda, was your other espionage author Sarah Gainham? I Googled and found her, and my library has some of her books. I've requested what the site said was probably her most famous and am anxious to get it, Night Falls on the City.

I did enjoy M.M. Kaye's Death books, found when I read her India novels, and I adored Norah Lofts back in the day. I also liked Frances Parkinson Keyes' books, although they were not Gothics.

Love the story about your niece and the tennis-match book discussions in your family. We still have seven-day new books at the library, but if you request them on line, you can keep them the normal three weeks.

Carolyn! Do you have ESP? I mean I barely gave you a clue and you came up with Sarah Gainham! I remember liking Night Falls on the City, set in Vienna. I liked the follow-ups, too, but it's been thirty -- maybe forty -- years since I read them. I hope you like Gainham's book. Let me know what you think.

Annpan, I meant to say something about your mention of Madeleine Brent (Peter O'Donnell). I enjoyed the romantic suspense books, but Modesty Blaise was too 'out there' for my taste. Funny that the same person could have created both. A surprising number, to me, of the Gothic writers were males who used female pennames. Dorothy Daniels was one but I can't recall his real name. Darkhaven, The Leland Legacy, and Marriott Hall were all by Daniels and definitely of a higher caliber than a lot of the Gothics of the 1960s. I still have my original Paperback Library copies of those three plus about a hundred others from PB Library and Lancer, American publishers of Gothics. I am a sucker for the cover art of that era, although it doesn't pay to expect them to depict anything actually in the books! Were the British and Australian covers enticing?

Friedag, I don't recall what the Brent covers were like. I got library copies mostly when I read them years ago and the illustrated covers may have been taken off the hardcovers there.
I know what you mean about deceptive artwork or worse, ones that give away the plot.
I have a 1974 paperback copy of Mary Stewart's "Nine Coaches Waiting" with the last dramatic scene prominently portrayed!
I gave this one to my daughter to read and she said it was "old-fashioned"! I think she is used to more explicit writing.

Frieda,

I wrote an incredibly great post to you just now in regard to this thread. I was priding myself on being able to use my laptop in bed when I am so totally and thoroughly exhausted. Just as I was patting myself on the back, I deleted the entire thing. Drat and double drat.

I have an author to add to your list.

Simone St. James

She has only written three books so far. I have read two and just ordered the new one from amazon. They are set between the world wars in England. The main character is usually a young single female. There is a bit of romance as there always seems to be a strong male character. But there is nothing gratuitous in the book. Indeed, she seems to have done her research so that description, setting, and conversation are period-authentic. They are ghost stories. Not the blood-curdling, scare-your-pants-off ghost stories, but the spine-tingling can't-put-the-book-down variety. There is always a mystery surrounding the ghost (like the old Scooby Do cartoons...).

In the order of publication:

The Haunting of Maddie Clare
An Inquiry into Love and Death
Silence for the Dead

Great thread, great input.. thank you everyone.
PAM

If looking for a good mystery writer I will put forward FRANCIS FYFIELD, I have read only two of her novels and really enjoyed them.

The Evening Standard has quoted on the cover of my latest "The Best Crime Writer Alive".