They’re Serious about Series and Standalone Novels

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Some authors are good at two or more things: novels and short stories, fiction and nonfiction, literary fiction and mass-audience fiction, etc. For this post, I’ll add to that by focusing on authors who are good at series as well as standalone novels. It certainly requires some different writing muscles to wrap up things in one book vs. extending things across multiple books.

This topic occurred to me last week as I read Val McDermid’s A Place of Execution, a superb standalone novel with a concluding twist that will knock your socks off. My previous experience with McDermid was with her series fiction, including the books starring “cold case” detective Karen Pirie.

I followed A Place of Execution with Martin Cruz Smith’s Independence Square — his 10th in the series starring Russian investigator Arkady Renko that began with Gorky Park. (Independence Square was okay; not as good as the earlier Renko books.) Smith has also written standalone novels such as Rose.

Sometimes, authors toggle throughout their careers between standalone books and series — as has been the case with Smith and McDermid as well as authors such as Walter Mosley with his Easy Rawlins books and much more. Other times, authors start with standalone novels before hitting on a hit series and focusing on that — as did Sue Grafton, who wrote two standalones before launching her popular Alphabet Mysteries (25 in all; she reached the letter “Y” before she died).

J.K. Rowling has also written many more series novels than standalone ones: seven Harry Potter books, then The Casual Vacancy one-off, then seven Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott crime novels (so far).

L.M. Montgomery followed her classic Anne of Green Gables with seven sequels over the years, during which time she also penned the Emily trilogy and standalones such as The Blue Castle.

Stephen King is known mostly for standalone novels, with a sprinkling of sequels and trilogies, but has also written many books in The Dark Tower series.

Some long-ago authors also toggled. For instance, James Fenimore Cooper wrote the five “Leatherstocking” novels (including The Last of the Mohicans) as well as various standalone books. Alexandre Dumas did both as well — many standalones (most famously The Count of Monte Cristo) as well as The Three Musketeers and its five sequels (sometimes published as fewer sequels when certain books were combined into one edition).

Your thoughts about and examples of this topic?

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65 thoughts on “They’re Serious about Series and Standalone Novels”

  2. Hi Dave,

    Like so many people I got completely swept up in the “Twilight” craze. The night that I finished the first book I went well out of my way to the only bookseller I could find still open to buy all the sequels because I wanted to be able to read them one after the other (which I rarely do). I’ve read them another time or two since then and while they still have nostalgic value, I have to admit that Stephenie Meyer isn’t the most talented writer going around. Then a few years ago I stumbled on her stand alone, non supernatural “The Chemist” which I finally started reading this week. Again, her writing won’t win any literary awards, but I’m having a surprisingly good time with the characters that she’s created that have nothing in common with vampires and werewolves. She has much more diversity than I would have given her credit for.

    Sue

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    • Thank you, Sue! I’ve never tried Stephenie Meyer’s books; maybe I should. Glad you found that lone open bookstore. 🙂 There are indeed writers who tell a good story while not being top wordsmiths; I thought that was also the case with Dan Brown’s clunky but compelling “The Da Vinci Code.”

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  3. Hi Dave, I tend to avoid series although I did read 6 1/2 of the Harry Potter books and 21/2 of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The half being the last books in both series which became so drawn out and boring for me, I skipped to the end. I do like Aggie Christie’s series but have not read a standalone book of hers ( not sure if she wrote any). I started the Regeneration series by Pat Barker. The first was brilliant but the second had to much sex for me. I was interested in the history. The same thing happened with Bernard Cornwall’s Sharpe series – it became to sex and relationships focused for me. Nice post.

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    • Thank you, Robbie! I loved the “Harry Potter” series and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy; glad you read most of each. There were indeed tedious spots in both works, but most of the rest was quite compelling, I thought. And, yes, some series or trilogies can lose a degree of appeal after the first book, but of course not all. For instance, I thought Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy started great and just got more and riveting.

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  4. Because I read mainly mysteries, I read lots of series, and over the years there must have been 50 or more mystery writers whose next books I was looking forward to (some of them have died, like P D James, Dick Frances, or Margaret Maron) and I’m still adding new people (new to me, at least) like Mick Herron. But I also read novels that stand alone, with or without a mystery involved. The great thing about mystery series is how much you look forward to meeting your old friend(s), the detective(s), again. But I don’t NEED to meet characters again–a good novel should give you a great feeling of satisfaction when it ends, assuming enough of the threads you’ve been following are tied up.

    I’ve written a quartet of mystery novels, the Linder and Donatelli books, and I think each one stands on its own. The quartet also provides a feeling of conclusion with the fourth book. I may write a fifth, but right now I’m starting to work on a standalone novel. It’s a new challenge!

    So, this is a topical post for me, Dave.

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    • Thank you, Kim! Glad you can relate to this post, partly because of your own book writing. 🙂 Great observation that mystery/detective fiction often lends itself to the series format — with the same sleuth returning for additional cases. 🙂 And I agree that the way authors wrap up things is very important, whether they’re concluding a series or a standalone novel.

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  6. Gosh, where to start? All those books I have read, and so many different genres. So, I will just say… that was very interesting. Oh, and yes, I have seen ‘The Mousetrap’ more than twice – say nothing!

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  7. I haven’t read  ‘A Place of Execution’ by Val McDermid, but am intrigued after your recommendation! The most recent standalone book I’ve read is “Thinner” by Stephen King. It’s my first book by this author, and I’m flabbergasted to say the least (it was awesome!). 😊📚

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    • Thank you, Ada! I hope you enjoy “A Place of Execution,” if you get to it. It would be great even without the surprise ending, but the surprise ending was a bonus. 🙂

      Wow! You have a LOT of Stephen King reading ahead of you, if you want that. 🙂

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  9. Interestingly Dave, I don’t tend to read sequels of novels, I prefer standalone novels! ‘A Place of Execution’ by Val McDermid has certainly caught my eye especially as you have mentioned the twist ending!!! Sounds good!! Dave, I’m trying to fathom where Stephen King is getting the material to write sequels!! His standalone books are already on the long side!!! Have a lovely week and thank you. Sharon

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  11. Dave, as always your posts open a door to thinking about books in new ways. The comparison between authors who write both standalone and series fiction is especially rich—each format calls forth a different kind of storytelling rhythm, doesn’t it? I love both the standalone and the series. Of course my most favourite series, as you know is Lord of the Rings!!! And what would we do without Sherlock Holmes. But there are others that I have taken the step to read the next one….

    One of my favourite series is by Tarquin Hall, who created the wonderfully astute and delightfully human detective Vish Puri, “India’s most private investigator.” I discovered the series through another favourite “series” author of mine, Alexander McCall Smith, who recommended Hall’s work

    I especially appreciate how Tarquin Hall’s books combine mystery with warmth, humour, and cultural texture. The Vish Puri series may be detective fiction, but it also captures the atmosphere and contradictions of modern India. There’s something beautiful about a series that not only entertains but also allows us to travel and reflect—to enter into another rhythm of life.

    What I find interesting is that in many cases, a good series can also function like a collection of standalones. Take Vish Puri or even Agatha Christie’s Poirot—the story is complete in each book, but we return to spend more time with the character, not necessarily because we’re following an unresolved arc. It’s a relationship, not a cliffhanger.

    That’s quite different from something like The Lord of the Rings, where the trilogy is a single story told in three acts. Both approaches have their magic—one invites us to return for companionship, the other to journey toward a conclusion.

    Thank you again for a most excellent discussion. I look forward to Sundays to meet up with you and this amazing collection of book-lovers.

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! Yes, definitely a different storytelling rhythm between standalone novels and series.

      “The Lord of the Rings” and the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories — classics!

      I appreciate the mention of Tarquin Hall and his Vish Puri series! Will have to give that a try. The first book was “The Case of the Missing Servant,” from what Wikipedia tells me. Good detective fiction can indeed almost be literary fiction in some cases.

      Yes, a series can contain books that totally work as standalones. I remember the first Jack Reacher novel I read by Lee Child was the 14th in the series (“61 Hours”) and I found it very compelling even without knowing the character’s backstory and previous adventures.

      “It’s a relationship, not a cliffhanger” — great line!

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  12. Interesting theme, Dave. I imagine that, for authors, the mixture of stand-alone and series may offer a challenge they crave and/or alternative ways of telling the stories that drive them. Agatha Christie’s murder mystery series, featuring Poirot and Miss Marple, fascinated me as a young adult reader. These days, I prefer standalone novels, including those by my favorite authors.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! I agree that for some authors, doing things differently from project to project is a real draw — and one way to vary creativity is to write standalone books as well as series.

      The majority of the few Agatha Christie books I’ve read I also read when I was younger. 🙂

      I have a preference for standalone books, too, but do enjoy some series a lot — including Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels.

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  13. Yet another great topic, Dave. I’d like to add Honore de Balzac’s ‘La Comedie Humaine’, which is vast, having some standalone novels, with others connected and recurring characters appearing in more than one book. ‘La Pere Goriot’ and ‘La Cousine Bette’ are two of the better known, and which I’ve read. There’s also the late, great naturalist and author Gerald Durrell, who wrote The Corfu Trilogy as well as many standalone books such as ‘The Whispering Land’. Yet another is another late and great author, the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, author of The Cairo Trilogy as well as standalones such as ‘Children of the Alley’, which got him attacked for similar reasons to Salman Rushdie (long before Rushdie’s attack). I read and reviewed this latter novel not long ago, and reviewed it on my website. On the lighter, Jean Plaidy (long gone) wrote historical books, often as a set of three about such personages as Mary, Queen of Scots, Charles II of England and Scotland, Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia. On a personal level, my debut meant-to-be-standalone novel ‘Fairytales Don’t Come True’ turned into a six-volume family series, while my ‘You Know What You Did’ suggested a sequel, which I eventually wrote, as ‘What Else Did You Do?’. My latest publication, ‘An Honourable Institution’ is a standalone, however – for the time being. Thanks for the usual mind-exercising post, Dave, and have a good week. 🙂 🙂

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  14. I enjoyed Steig Larsson’s Millenium series and Ray Bradbury’s Green Town Trilogy beginning with Dandelion Wine. Yet I don’t really care for series book since they can become problematic. For instance, if you lose your place, say in book 2, you almost have to reread book 1 or a significant part of it. It’s sort of like deja vu– been there, read that or have I? Yikes! Nor do I like streaming movies although with movies one can fast-forward and rewind. Post-it notes and book markers can help, but often not. When you lose your place, you may also lose the initial experience.

    Nice theme Dave. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! Excellent observation! And if one doesn’t read the next book in a series fairly soon after finishing the previous one, a person might forget some things and lose the flow.

      I loved the Millennium trilogy and liked “Dandelion Wine”; didn’t know the latter was part of a trilogy!

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  15. Fab topic Dave, thank you!

    I’m citing Agatha whose favourite series character is Poirot, and then Miss Marrple.

    However, she has many stand alone books, of which I have read one, And Then There Were None.

    🤭 Bonus: I’ve seen her play “The Mousetrap” several times, and it’s terrific!

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    • Thank you, Resa! I appreciate the mention of Agatha Christie! I haven’t read enough of her to know: Are the books starring Poirot and Miss Marple considered series per se, or standalone mysteries with those sleuths as recurring characters?

      Of the six (?) so Christie novels I’ve read, “And Then There Were None” is definitely my favorite. 🙂

      I unfortunately have never seen “The Mousetrap.” Great that you have!

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  16. Dave, you’re so well-read! I’m no match and can’t do proper justice to the topic. The only example I can readily come up with is Émile Zola, who wrote many great stand-alone novels, including the famous Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, which is effectively an ecosystem of 20 novels that very well bear to be read outside of the Rougon-Macquart context. Great post!

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    • Thank you, Dingenom! Great that you mention that Emile Zola cycle! I’ve read maybe 10 of the 20, and found most of them very compelling. “Germinal,” “The Drinking Den,” “The Masterpiece,” “The Beast in Man,” etc. Interestingly, as you know and allude to, that Zola cycle is kind of a hybrid of standalone and series fiction; each Rougon-Macquart novel can stand alone, yet members of the same extended/multigenerational families appear and some individual characters make multiple appearances — starring in one book and being a secondary player in another.

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  18. Interesting food for thought. I actually considered writing my book, ‘Reunions And Secrets’ as a stand alone – and then I reached the end. Yes, there’s a second book and a third, fourth… up to eight so far.

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