(Note: This page is no longer being updated. I occasionally talk about books on my LiveJournal, though.)
On Beulah Height, by Reginald Hill
The best novel in the Dalziel and Pascoe series, and a good place to start if you don't want to go back to the beginning. The story here is profound and devastating. I wholeheartedly recommend the entire series. Hill is an excellent writer who belies the claim that mysteries are just formula. And the series has one of the best (and certainly earliest) recurring gay characters in mystery fiction.
A Fatal Inversion, by Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell)
Vine, who also writes the Inspector Wexford mysteries under the name Ruth Rendell, is another author I can recommend without exception. The Vine novels are more psychological thrillers than traditional mysteries, but they definitely avoid thriller cliches. In A Fatal Inversion, some basically good people turn out to have done something very, very bad. And there's some slashiness.
The John Rebus Mysteries, by Ian Rankin
Read all of them. They're set in a decidedly gritty, modern Scotland, and Rebus is a man who's got problems and mopes interestingly. Plus the stories are always good and Rankin presents moral dilemmas in absolutely compelling ways.
The Henry Rios Mysteries, by Michael Nava
Again, read them all. This is a series that is actually finished, unlike most mystery series, so you're not stuck reading an infinite number of books. Nava was perhaps the first American mystery writer to feature a gay main character, Henry Rios. Rios is also a defense lawyer (as opposed the the usual cop or prosecutor in many mysteries). Excellent books with a genuine compassion for people's struggles and the forces that sometimes make them commit crimes.
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