Crime novels

[Tom Storer]

The "What are you reading?" thread has generally had many references to serious literature and academic tomes, with little attention paid to what is sometimes called "genre" fiction. And yet I'm sure I'm not the only one around here who loves crime novels: whether private eye, police procedurals, FBI-tracks-serial-killer thrillers, or what have you, novels with violent crime as the focus are often, well, pretty neat.

John Harvey, Colin Dexter, Tony Hillerman, Martin Cruz Smith, Elmore Leonard, Reginald Hill... these are only some of my favorite writers in the genre. Right now I'm reading "Darkness, Take My Hand" by Dennis Lehane, one of the real good ones.

Who else has recommendations and plugs to offer?

[Brian Olewnick]

I tend to have pretty short patience with mystery novels (save for Ruth Rendell and an abiding love of Rex Stout) and distinguish them from "crime" novels which, when well written, I enjoy a bunch. Mosley falls on that side of the line for me and I've liked virtually everything of his I've read. Off the top of my head, I liked some of Philip Kerr's earlier work very much (Berlin Noir) and Prof. Bivins turned me on to George Pelecanos (think I'm spelling that correctly). Liked Leonard a lot early on but, like Carl Hiasson, think he's worked himself into something of the rut that typically comes along with success. Probably a buncha others I can't think of right now. Not sure if it falls comfortably into this category, but I really loved Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" from a couple of years back. Oh, Jan Wetterling, Per Wahloo, those guys too.

[moneyp]

I'm a classicist... Hammett, Chandler.

Gimme Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe and Nick & Nora.

[graypencil]

Now you're in my area ..since I haven't the appetite for serious literature very often, here are a few of my favoorite authors ( in no particular order ) :

James Lee Burke
Carl Haiiasen (sp?)
Tim Dorsey ( another guy similar to CH, but sillier by far )
Andrew Vachss ( verrry dark !!)
Robert Tanenbaum
Robert Crais
David Lindsay
Laurence Shames ( another Fla guy )
Thos. Perry
Eugene Izzi
Jonathan Kellerman

more later, after I look at the bookshelf ..

[Tom Storer]

Andrew Vachss - isn't he the one who often has pedophile bad guys (who then meet bad ends)? "Flood," was that him? Yes, very dark. But good.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

Elmore Leonard! Swag, Yeah!

I love that stuff. Funny thing is I try to stay away from Leonard these days, because when I don't I just plow through his books and end up exhausting my funds real quick like. But Leonard is the man, no question.

James Lee Burke, best prose writer in crime fiction since James M. Cain.

Then for a related genre, there are spy novels....

Not many great spy novels--Le Carre is so much better than anyone else, that I don't even bother anymore with others. Le Carre in his Smiley trilogy, has written three books better than 99% of "literary" novels.

[moneyp]

Originally posted by achilles
Not many great spy novels--Le Carre is so much better than anyone else, that I don't even bother anymore with others. Le Carre in his Smiley trilogy, has written three books better than 99% of "literary" novels.

LeCarre, definitely. Hail!

[Dr Dave]

Michael Connelly's Heironymous Bosch novels are the best ongoing character series, for my money. In order:
The Black Echo
The Black Ice
Concrete Blonde
The Last Coyote
Trunk Music
Angels Flight
A Darkness More Than Night
City of Bones

Harry Bosch is an LA detective who makes mistakes, falls in love with the wrong woman, has problems with authority, and generally has a pretty messed-up personal life. He's got good instincts, though, for which his bosses protect him (most of the time). Connelly, a former LA newspaper reporter, has the modern police procedural down cold. Check out his other stuff, too. Oh yeah: If you only know him through Bloodwork, the Clint Eastwood movie, you don't really know much at all. A lot of dialogue remained intact, but the plot was changed drastically (and foolishly, I think).

Ian Rankin is another great; his character, John Rebus, is even more morally oblique than Harry Bosch, and the settings, mostly in urban Scotland, seem grimly real. There are so many Rankin titles, I don't want to list them, but "Knots & Crosses" isn't a bad place to start to get to know Rebus, a good cop but a two-fisted drinker who constantly skirts disaster.

Re Andrew Vachss: Hard Candy, Blossom, and Shella are good, but you know, he writes the same story over and over again. Avoid The Batman at all costs.

[patricia]

I'm about half-way through Walker Percy's "Love In The Ruins" and it is facinating and insightful, with pockets of brilliant insight and humour.

With my other eye, I'm reading Patricia Cornwell's "Black Notice" again. I'm anxiously awaiting her follow-up to "The Last Precinct", which changed the focus of the series of "Scarpetta" stories.
Cornwell's sidetracking into her "Portrait of a Killer", her look at the Jack the Ripper case, for the last couple of years, has delayed the next book featuring my favourite characters, Marino, Lucy etc. and their change in direction.
Her investigative book into the Jack the Ripper case, "Portrait of a Killler", using modern forensics, as well as old fashioned detective work, resulted in as good a study of the crimes as I've seen to date. The modern techniques, available now, are very enlightening and it is a facinating read.

[Monte Smith]

I usually go through an annual period of crime fiction. Of all the genres in "genre fiction," its the detective story, I think, that has attracted the biggest geniuses and produced the most masterpieces. But then, I have never read a Harlequin romance and I am sure they have their points. Also, I don't read much sci-fi at all.

My faves:
Robert B. Parker--his character Spenser (with an s like the poet) is a fantastic blend of uncynical humor, physical courage, and compassion. He's the man.

Ross McDonald
Janwillem van der Wetering
Dashiell Hammett

My wife has read everything by Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine) and swears by her.

[patricia]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
I usually go through an annual period of crime fiction. Of all the genres in "genre fiction," its the detective story, I think, that has attracted the biggest geniuses and produced the most masterpieces. But then, I have never read a Harlequin romance and I am sure they have their points. Also, I don't read much sci-fi at all.

My faves:
Robert B. Parker--his character Spenser (with an s like the poet) is a fantastic blend of uncynical humor, physical courage, and compassion. He's the man.

Ross McDonald
Janwillem van der Wetering
Dashiell Hammett

My wife has read everything by Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine) and swears by her.

If your wife likes Ruth Rendell, ask her if she has read the collection of short stories, by Rendell, called "The Girlfriend".
It's typical Rendell, with her signature twist endings and a great read.
Rendell rather reminds me, at least in her shortstories, of Daphne du Mauriers' work in the same genre.
If you remember the Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie movie, "Don't Look Now", the source was du Maurier's shortstory of the same name.
I like both authors and I think that "Rebecca" and "My Cousin Rachel", by du Maurier are required reading for those of us who enjoy the off-beat.

[graypencil]

Ross Thomas is/was one of the great writers of scheme/double cross books I can recall, too.

and yes ..Vachss is responsible for the burke series about busting really rancid pedophiles ..excellent and dark ..

Dennis Lehane is also good.

[Jason Bivins]

Ah, I love this stuff. I steadfastly refused to read crime fiction for many years but had a conversion experience on a long plane trip.

I agree with Brian that several previously reliable authors - Hiaasen and Mosley come to mind - have fallen into cliche. And I agree with Dr. Dave about Vachss, whose work I now find to be pretentious and bluntly moralistic (c'mon man, is it really that much of a stretch to hate pedophiles? sheesh).

The ones who I find consistently good these days are Pelecanos, Lehane, James Sallis, James Crumley, Henning Mankell (who assumes the throne of Sjowall and Wahloo, imho, though Aristide doesn't care for him so much I think), Ian Rankin (who may be starting to run out of steam), and David Peace (whose Red Riding Quartet is unbelievably dark - friends tell me that Denise Mina's Garnethill trilogy is in this vein but I haven't yet dug in).

Based on the one book I've read by Rennie Airth, I'd put him in the same class. Another first-timer who impressed me is Salar Abdoh, who wrote a great book called "The Poet Game" (about Middle Eastern terrorists in NYC - published in 1999 or 2000 if anyone's interested).

And of course everyone should read Charles Willeford, especially the Hoke Mosley books.

[Monte Smith]

Carm doesn't think she's seen that title, patricia. But she keeps a list of all the titles she has read in her purse so that anytime we are in a used bookstore she can doublecheck. Thanks for the rec.

I don't know if you guys count the spy novel as a subset of the detective genre (I guess I do), but I love the new Penguin reissues of Ian Fleming's original James Bond books. Can't judge a book by its cover, huh? These stylish, retro covers are great! The Bond novels had been out of print in the US (if you can believe that), but they are back in this handsome paperback edition. I really enjoyed Fleming back in high school. They aren't literature, but they are not as stupid as the films.

Do I expect you to read them?
No, I expect you to die, Mr. Bond.
(Sorry).

yeah, jason, Crumley and Willeford, two great ones.
Charles Portis too, thouhg maybe not truly a crime writer.

The Bond books aren't really spy novels--they're fantasy.
Le Carre writes spy novels.

[Monte Smith]

Yeah, I'd agree with you on Bond as fantasy, achilles. For what they are, though, they are entertaining.

[Sergio Zamora]

How can you have a crime novel thread and not mention the *great* Jim Thompson?

[elizabethbrion]

I've been reading embarrassingly large quantities of crime fiction for the last six or seven years (I tend to read around 500-1,000 books a year, and I've kind of gone through most of the other sections of the bookstore already - except romance and fantasy, and that is never gonna happen). Some of my favorites have already been mentioned in the thread - Rankin, Lehane, Pelecanos. Denise Mina's trilogy is *stunning* - unbelievably dark, but laugh-out-loud funny in places, and populated by some of the most realistically girly girls I can remember seeing in any sort of fiction.

Also: Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, (sometimes) Kinky Friedman, Sparkle Hayter, Lauren Henderson, S.J. Rozan, Laurie R. King (although I'm not big on her Mary Russell series), Laura Lippman, and my number one candidate for Author Who Should Be 100,000 Times More Famous Than He Is, Keith Snyder.

[graypencil]

Also ..

I'm not generally very much into Stuart Woods books, because much of his stuff seems rather facile as if written on autopilot, but his book "Palindrome" was quite absorbing ..with a wonderful twisted plot.

[patricia]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
Carm doesn't think she's seen that title, patricia. But she keeps a list of all the titles she has read in her purse so that anytime we are in a used bookstore she can doublecheck. Thanks for the rec.

I don't know if you guys count the spy novel as a subset of the detective genre (I guess I do), but I love the new Penguin reissues of Ian Fleming's original James Bond books. Can't judge a book by its cover, huh? These stylish, retro covers are great! The Bond novels had been out of print in the US (if you can believe that), but they are back in this handsome paperback edition. I really enjoyed Fleming back in high school. They aren't literature, but they are not as stupid as the films.

Do I expect you to read them?
No, I expect you to die, Mr. Bond.
(Sorry).

You're welcome. Carm will love this collection. If she looks for it and can't find it, let me know.

As for the Bond books, I used to read them and quite enjoyed them. I think, though everybody I know disagrees with me, that the Bond books are much better than any of the Bond movies. Lots of wit, fantastic situations and the various women were funny to read about. They don't, IMO, come out as well as film characters as they do as fantasy characters in the books. But, the films loom larger than the books, unfortunately.
I've always thought that it was odd that people who tried to emulate Bond were thought of as kind of cool, while people who do the same with Startrek characters are considered borderline certifiable. Maybe it's the clothes.

[Mike Goodbar]

I don't think I saw James Ellroy's name mentioned on this thread. I'm not a crime-novel reader, but I liked LA Confidential, American Tabloid, etc.

How is he regarded among the cogniscenti?

[patricia]

Originally posted by Mike Goodbar
I don't think I saw James Ellroy's name mentioned on this thread. I'm not a crime-novel reader, but I liked LA Confidential, American Tabloid, etc.

How is he regarded among the cogniscenti?

Love Ellroy. If you liked "LA Confidential", you should pick up "White Jazz" [great title] which is the follow-up.

[Monte Smith]

Patricia:

Is the book you recommended called THE NEW GIRL FRIEND? Because that story (and others from a collection of the same name) are in a volume of COLLECTED STORIES by Rendall that Carm has but hasn't yet read.

I bought both volumes of the Library of America's AMERICAN CRIME anthologies. Only read one novel from it, which is Highsmith's THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. That was incredible, and spurred me on to read some of the sequels--none of which, unfortunately, I found as entertaining as the original.

[patricia]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
Patricia:

Is the book you recommended called THE NEW GIRL FRIEND? Because that story (and others from a collection of the same name) are in a volume of COLLECTED STORIES by Rendall that Carm has but hasn't yet read.

I bought both volumes of the Library of America's AMERICAN CRIME anthologies. Only read one novel from it, which is Highsmith's THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. That was incredible, and spurred me on to read some of the sequels--none of which, unfortunately, I found as entertaining as the original.

Answer to the Rendell title question, yes it is. I have it in front of me. I hadn't read it for years. The title of the book is the first story and the others are equally off-the-wall. She'll love it.

The Ripley novels are several and I agree that the first one is the best, but the follow-ups are no slouches. I have most, but not all of them. Patricia Highsmith succeeds in humanizing this amoral character to great effect.

[Dr Dave]

James Ellroy, yes indeed. His plots are incredibly complicated, but he's very worthwhile. "Black Dahlia" is destined for classic status.

[patricia]

Originally posted by Dr Dave
James Ellroy, yes indeed. His plots are incredibly complicated, but he's very worthwhile. "Black Dahlia" is destined for classic status.

I was going to mention "Black Dahlia". As far as I'm concerned, it's already a classic. Nobody draws crime story characters and gives them dialogue like Ellroy. He reminds me of Spillane, in a good way. His autobio, "My Dark Places" is a facinating study of what drives him, I think.
He is also a great interview.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Parker's Spenser books used to be very engrossing but as the series has gone on, there is much less suspense when you know that nothing "major" is going to happen (the closest was a few books back when Spenser got shot and the book became "The Recovery of Spenser"). I still read 'em. BTW, Parker's recent additions to his output: PI Sunny Randell & Police Chief Jess Stone seem "better" to me. Doc, you should pick up the first Jesse Stone book, "Night Passage". It's right up your alley. I'll have to go pick up one of those Michael Connelly books you mention. They sound similar.

Other favs: Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich & Sara Paretsky (all women... I never thought about that before).

Chandler's Marlowe books were a good read.

BTW, I want everyone here to try at least one Stephanie Plum story by Janet Evanovich. Start with "One For The Money" (which is not the best but it's where all the "introductory" stuff happens). These books are the best books I've read in years. Why?? There are some scenes written in way that gets me laughing so hard... I don't know how an author does this but Evanovich is the best. Of course, it may be my sick sense of humor? My wife won't let me read them at night because I keep waking her up.

Later,
Kevin

[graypencil]

I'd second Kevin on the Stephanie Plum books ..they are all quite enjoyable (..and you'll find yourself mentally casting the no doubt upcoming TV movie / Series .. )

For other sheer laughs of the Carl Hiaasen sardonic variety, I really recommend the Tim Dorsey books ( Hammerhead Ranch Motel and Triggerfish Twist the latest ones ) One reviewer likens Dorsey to Hiaasen on speed ..

[Tom Storer]

This has worked out better than I could have dreamed. I now have dozens of leads for authors I haven't read before.

I recently read a first novel by one Rob Reuland, "Hollowpoint." The blurb says "Rob Reuland is a senior assistant district attorney in the homicide bureau of the Brooklyn D.A.'s office." So it has that gritty verisimilitude. An impressive debut. (Says that in the blurb, too.)

Spy novels are off-topic in this thread, but what the hell--if you like spy novels, you have to read Allen Furst's beautiful, atmospheric up-to-and-into-WWII series: "Night Soldiers," "Dark Star," "The Polish Officer," "The World at Night," "Red Gold." Doomed, tragic figures in tense situations of heroism and betrayal, sacrifice and terror - all that good stuff.