What to read next
Books Like One for the Money
For Stephanie Plum fans who want more broke sleuths, nosy families and one detective who’s a dog.
Stephanie Plum takes up bounty hunting because she’s broke, and her first target is Joe Morelli, a cop she has plenty of history with. Then she shows up seven minutes late to dinner, and her mother treats the endangered pot roast as the real crisis while Grandma Mazur admires her cycling shorts.
That combination is hard to copy. Every book below has at least one piece of it. Some have the money trouble or the family, a couple have the chemistry, and one swaps in a dog.
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01Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
by Elle CosimanoThe closest match. Finlay is a broke, divorced novelist, and a stranger overhears her talking to her agent and offers her $50,000 to kill a husband. She has no intention of doing it. The bodies show up anyway, and so do sticky children and a preschool haircut gone very wrong.
It treats some heavy subjects lightly, including sexual violence and abusive relationships, which bothered some reviewers.
02Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door
by Lucy ScoreRiley is broke, divorced and trying to ignore her psychic visions when her neighbor is murdered and she becomes a suspect. Private investigator Nick Santiago tells her to lock her door. She points out that her elderly neighbors keep letting criminals in. Pick this one if Stephanie and Morelli were the main attraction.
03Wicked Appetite
by Janet EvanovichIf it’s Evanovich’s voice you miss, here’s more of it. Lizzy Tucker opens by bragging that she finished in the top ninety-three percent of her culinary class, then admits she failed gravy. Diesel, who crosses over from the Plum books, needs her help hunting magical stones, and they’re joined by a rude monkey. You don’t need the Plum books to follow it.
04Louisiana Longshot
by Jana DeLeonStephanie has no idea what she’s doing. Fortune Redding knows exactly how to kill a man, and her problem is passing as a librarian and former beauty queen in Sinful, Louisiana, while she hides from an arms dealer. Then her inherited dog digs up a human bone. Her colleagues worry about what she might do with knitting needles.
05The Spellman Files
by Lisa LutzThe Spellmans run a detective agency in San Francisco and spy on each other for fun. Izzy keeps files on her ex-boyfriends, and her parents run background checks on her dates. If the Plum family dinners were your favorite scenes, start here.
06A Bad Day for Sunshine
by Darynda JonesSunshine Vicram becomes sheriff of a small New Mexico town because her parents rigged an election she never entered. She starts planning their prison sentences. Her teenage daughter Auri calls it a little maneuvering. The mother and daughter banter carries a case that gets dark, with a missing teenager and Sunshine’s own past abduction.
07First Grave on the Right
by Darynda JonesCharley Davidson is a private investigator who also helps ghosts cross over, and she treats the dead with the same impatience she gives the living. Three murdered lawyers bring her their case. It’s steamier than Plum, with a stranger appearing in Charley’s dreams and romance at the center.
08The Quiche of Death
by M.C. BeatonAgatha Raisin retires to the village of Carsely, buys a quiche, enters it in the baking contest as her own, and the judge dies eating it. Like Stephanie, she gets into trouble through shortcuts that seemed reasonable at the time.
09Murder with Peacocks
by Donna AndrewsMeg Langslow is organizing three weddings when a phone call at six in the morning tells her the ceremony needs live peacocks. She asks whether they’ll be bought or rented. Wedding farce gets more space than the murder, which is the point.
10Burglars Can't Be Choosers
by Lawrence BlockThe classic pick. Bernie Rhodenbarr is a New York burglar with no guilty conscience, and a job goes wrong when the police find him in an apartment with a corpse. He has to solve a murder he didn’t commit while staying out of jail. The plot moves slowly, and Bernie’s dry narration is the reason to come.
11Dog on It
by Spencer QuinnChet the dog narrates his partner Bernie’s missing-teen case. He’s amazed that Bernie can’t see a tennis ball in the dark and understands more about the case than he can explain. The warmest book on the list, though the case includes kidnapping and threats to animals.
Start with Finlay Donovan Is Killing It if you want the same chaos, or The Spellman Files if you’re here for the family.
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