I don't think I've read one since The Midnight Club, at which I became really annoyed by what I saw as the author lying to me for the sake of a plot twist.

Yes! Not that I remember the lie or the twist, but it was cheap and shoddy and plain rude. I had that same feeling.

Midnight Club, IIRC is a novel he wrote ages ago, and I'm guessing got printed on the strength of his not-sucky stuff.

Yes! Not that I remember the lie or the twist, but it was cheap and shoddy and plain rude. I had that same feeling.

Basically, there's a scene where he describes one of the characters coming out of a plane, someone who's supposed to be dead or something. He uses his name and everything. And because he's writing in third-person omniscient (he can't be in subjective because the main character's not around), that description is assumed to be true. In the end, though, we find out that it was some guy dressed up as him or cloned as him or using fancy technological masks or something and it pissed me off. You could argue that it wasn't meant to be taken as truth, but merely the observations of a bystander, but that's not the way it felt, given the style of the writing.

Early Frederick Forsyth - Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs Of War - are about as good as that Clancy genre gets.

Espionage? Leonard, Le Carre Crime fiction/ mystery Lehane , Pelecanos(And not just cause he likes carrots)

That smells like the bullshit I remember, P-C. I'm okay with unreliable narrators, but you can't do that with third person omniscient and not anger me.

I know I need to try Dorothy Dunnett again--I tried the first Lymond book once and didn't get very far

This apparently happens to everyone. Put your head down and bull through to the end; if you haven't been grabbed by then you can probably walk away.

Historical... I don't read a lot, really. I'm very fond of Mary Renault, but I know some people bounce off of her prose.

paperback action adventure/thrillers

I ended up reading a bunch of these on my trip (because romance goes by too quickly, and sci-fi not often found on the free trade bookshelves in hostels). One I ended up enjoying was Lee Child--he's got a whole series with one character, some of which are rather better than others. I recommend the "hired to assassinate the VP" one as one of the better ones, but the others aren't terrible, as the genre goes.

I don't normally tear up or almost cry at books (the only time I can remember almost crying at a book is the last third or so of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, and I was in a sad mood at the time anyway), so I had to make note of this, re: The Time Traveler's Wife.

I just read the scene where we find out that Henry has been time traveling to the scene of his mother's death his entire fucking life. That's...dear God.

Susan, if you're still looking for recs, go back in time:

Samuel Shellabarger wrote fabulous swashbuckling historicals, mostly set during the Renaissance. Rafael Sabotini is legendary. Dumas' stuff was mostly historical.

More modern: Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters wrote a ton of very good stuff set in medieval England. The Heaven Tree Trilogy is one of my favorites. ::must get a copy and reread::

Sharon Kay Penman is very popular, although I'm not as sold on her. Jean Plaidy was a standby for me as a child, and she's one of the primary reasons I know anything about English history. (Sigh)

Dunnett, of course. If you find Game of Kings too dense, try Queen's Play or Disorderly Knights: the first two are pretty much one-offs. Or you could try Niccolo Rising, which is written in a much more accessible style, and set in Flanders among bankers and merchants and mercenaries of the mid-15th C. Many people prefer the Niccolo books to the Lymond ones.

Oh! PF Chisholm, who is Patricia Finney. As Finney, she wrote 2 killer novels set in Roman Britain and Ireland, based on the Ulster Cycle. She also wrote a pair of complex and baroque Elizabethan thrillers. As Chisholm, she's got a series of mysteries set on the Scots border, based on the real journals of Sir Robert Carey, one of Elizabeth I's cousins. It's all very good stuff.

If mysteries are ok, I can give you a whole bunch of names. Start with Bruce Alexander, who wrote a series featuring Sir John Fielding. There's also Anne Perry who writes two series set in Victorian England(different time frames) and Victoria Thompson whose series is set in Victorian New York.(There are many more, in various times and places, if you're interested)

Did I mention that I read a lot of historical mysteries? :)