David Handler books

Benji Golden Reading Order

Berger and Mitry Reading Order

Danny Levine Reading Order

Justin Westwood Reading Order

Standalone Novels

Stewart Hoag & Lulu Reading Order

David Handler has been writing mystery fiction since the late 1980s, with multiple series that span his career. His most enduring creation is the Stewart Hoag and Lulu series, which began with The Man Who Died Laughing in 1988. The books follow a washed-up celebrity novelist and his loyal basset hound as they encounter murders in the worlds of publishing, Hollywood, and high society. After a long gap following The Man Who Loved Women to Death (1997), Handler revived the series in 2017 with The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes and has published new entries regularly since.

His Berger and Mitry series, set in the fictional Connecticut town of Dorset, pairs a film critic with a local police officer in a small-town mystery setting that ran for eleven books. Handler also wrote the Danny Levine novels early in his career, the Benji Golden books, and the Justin Westwood trilogy, which takes mythological titles like Aphrodite, Midas, and Hades. Each series has its own tone, but Handler’s sharp dialogue and witty narrative voice run through all of them.

Handler started his career with non-mystery fiction before finding his niche in the genre. His standalone novels and earlier work show a writer experimenting before settling into the mystery format that would define the bulk of his career. The long run of the Stewart Hoag series, now at seventeen books, confirms his staying power in the genre.