Crime/mystery novels/novelists

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

Count me a huge Chandler fan. The master of language in the genre - but struggled mightily with plot and story architecture. Hammett, Cain and Christie are the form's boilerplate and, like Conan Doyle, bear reading if only to understand its evolution. Poe invented the form, so is entitled to assay if only by way of thanks. Ellroy's the linear Los Angeles noir descendant, as you say, and at his best (mid 80s to mid-90s?), is singular.

No love for Gorky Park so far? Smilla's Sense of Snow?

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

I'll second that. Terrific stuff.

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

How about Randy Wayne White's Doc Ford series?

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

i enjoy arturo perez-reverte's books, the flander's panel and the club dumas being two of my favorites.

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

Jesus, are you guys reading the titles from my sagging bookshelves?

Add to the list Richard Stark (Westlake's alter ego), John D. MacDonald, Thomas Perry and Arthur Upfield. (Bizarre trivia, what American author used the name's of Upfield's characters in a mystery novel that also included Willie Nelson?)

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

No Bourne? No Smiley?

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

I'll second jmac's summoning of the American canon, and I've been re-reading the Holmes stories since I was nine.
For me, the modern guys start and end with James Lee Burke. "In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead" is one of the best novels -- no modifiers -- I've ever read.

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

Love Michael Connelly, and Caleb Carr. Greg Illes (sp?) is good also.

Another keeper: John Lescroart. His Dismas Hardy series is excellent. Should be read in order.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/series/187

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

A couple of summers ago, I inhaled the early le Carre novels. You can look them up in the library -- The Spy Who Came in from The Cold is the second or third one. I enjoy his stuff today, but it's a bit of work. Those early ones were much more classic mysteries. If you enjoy that time period and genre -- early '60s and '70s Cold War -- the atmospherics are great.

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

I look at LeCarre as a spy novelist, but you're right. His stuff can be really, really good.
I read "Tinker Tailor" on a long plane ride to the Middle East. Very weird.

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

I've read a couple interviews Ellroy has done, and the guy seems like a vengeful, arrogant prick. He seems to appreciate Hammett, but thinks Chandler is overrated, and seems to think he's better than both, which just isn't the case.

Anyhow, I agree on Chandler and Hammett. I'd go with Chandler for language, and Hammett for storytelling.
For current writers, I'd go with Lehane. His writing can be outstanding, no matter the subject, as he showed in his short story collection, "Coronado."

 

Re: Crime/mystey novels/novelists

Not to turn this into a John Le Carre thread but Richard Burton in "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" is one of the best spy movies of all time.

And the Tinker Tailor TV series starring Sir Alec Guiness as George Smiley was breathtakingly good.

Oh, and how can we forget PD James? She has two characters who appear in different books: Inspector Adam Dalgliesh and private investigator Cordelia Gray.

She's in that traditional British mystery style but she's adept at character develoopment unlike someone like Agatha Christie whose prose is almost unreadable. Could never understand the appeal.