Crime Fiction, S/D

Surprised there isn't a thread on this already (there's a small UK Crime Fiction vs US Crime Fiction thread). Am thoroughly enjoying reading the New Fiction thread, but don't read enough New Fiction to participate. But I do read a lot of crime fiction. Series stuff, serious stuff, old stuff, new stuff, pulp stuff, trash stuff, wahoo!

Currently reading: The Big Gold Dream by Chester Himes
Stuff I like leans toward urban grit with a slight bent toward procedural: Richard Price, Walter Mosley, George Pelecanos, Charles Willeford, Ian Rankin, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo's Martin Beck series
Have lately discovered, mostly by accident Paco Ignacio Taibo II's post-Marxist absurdist Mexican noir, which is fantastic and highly recommended.

It's all about Patricia Highsmith.

himes's debut, if he hollers let him go, is a masterpiece. check out a coffin for dimitrios by eric ambler. the missing link between thomas de quincy and quentin tarantino

Richard Price, George Pelecanos ftw.

Also love Dennis Lehane's Kenzie-Gennaro series; Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, Andrew Vachss (though he can be kinda patchy).
Gonna give Robert Crais a try, Monkey's Raincoat currently top of the pile awaiting greenlight.

What's a good starting point for Richard Price?

Clockers.

For me that's the definitive Price. I love pretty much everything he's written, but Clockers to me is his perfect novel. Wanderers a close second. But damn, Clockers is great. Just talking about it make me want to go back and reread it.

Definitely Clockers. The first thirty pages is basically a slightly more in-depth Wire Season 1.

Coffin for Demetrios is actually on the shelf beside my desk at work.

Am curious about Reed Farrel Coleman: big-upped by Pelecanos, drives a big-rig on the side, sounds like working-class noir. Anyone?

Anyone? Curious too. Also curious re James Lee Burke. I kinda think Pelecanos is overrated.

http://www.examiner.com/article/reed-farrel-coleman-peeling-back-the-layers-of-onion-street-q-a

does anyone hear read don winslow? i've been going back through some ones i read before (the savages/kings of cool diptych) and just read the dawn patrol and the death and life of bobby z anew.

now about to dive into the cartel, his sequel to the power of the dog, which is certainly his best book imo

*here. jesus

Yeah; I've read California Fire & Life (my favorite), Savages, Kings of Cool (hated the former, the latter was an improvement), The Dawn Patrol and The Death and Life of Bobby Z. Just finished The Cartel, and I think it's his best book if best = "most writerly." Not as slangy/attitude-poisoned as Savages, it reminded me of James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere - sprawling and ambitious, but not disappearing up his own ass like he did with American Tabloid and everything since.

aw, i like crazy conspiracy-ass ellroy. but i can totally see how it would be irksome. i haven't read california fire yet, and i see no reason for my winslow kick to stop rolling so i'll get to it after cartel

always appreciate how well winslow navigates tone from book to book, like the pissed-off sarcasm of savages/dawn patrol and the utter earnest despair of the power of the dog still seem very much like the same voice just in different cadences

anyhoo, glad this thread exists bc old and new crime fic are pretty much all i read these days!

Thanks for the revive. Am wondering if anyone can recommend novels about terrorists, esp. left-wing ones. I raided my library's booksale and found a novel about infiltrating an animal rights group. Can't remember what the book was but it got me thinking I'd like to read more plots like this.

I feel like massimo carlotto's novels have touched on things like that, like italian radical politics, although they are not the primary focus.

the vibe you describe losted seems more like espionage fiction, which I don't know as well except the big names - le carre, deighton, charles mccarry

re: all my winslow enthusiasm upthread, he did a podcast interview with grantland a little while ago and he touches on some fascinating stuff, like drug legalization https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/grantland-pop-culture/id642537435?mt=2&i=346205755

(on zing didn't realize how that link would copy, podcast can prob be found by searching on the grantland site)

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll check out Carlotto. Amazon has loads of 1-cent books, so I've been buying bunches of them. I was looking for novels about bombers, like Weather Underground or Unabomber bombers.
I'm not much for espionage and international terrorism stuff. But if any of it is worthwhile and not too "guy", let me know.

I am reading a Sharyn McCrumb book, I like her a lot. Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is really good. She is southern, if you like Appalachian settings.

Currently reading some Ross MacDonald books. If you're a fan of literary-ish detective stories in the Chandler/Hammett vein, he's well worth checking out. All the ones I've read tend to center around family trauma (kids who hate their parents, etc.) that metastasizes into murder and mayhem.

only read one macdonald but it was pretty incredible - the goodbye look

i like ross macdonald but they get AWFULLY samey after you read a few. I read a bunch though. I think i liked "the Chill' and "The Ivory Grin" the most.

lately i have been filling in gaps in my Elmore Leonard reading. Also just read one of the worst/stupidest Ed McBains yet.

i do like Carlotto, especially The Goodbye Kiss and At The End Of A Dull Day. His PI novels about The Alligator & friends are fun too, but not quite as dark.

I liked the McBain novels enough when I was in junior high that I'm afraid to revisit them now.

i prefer the earliest ones which are dated and kitchy and fun. the one i just read was just... boring and kinda bad. "Calypso" -- about a murdered calypso singer whose brother was abducted years ago by a mentally ill woman who keeps him locked up for S&M and torture? weird and boring.

ian you have any recommendations on the willeford/leonard tip? I see these crime authors who have thirty novels like creasey and others and w/my limited budget and time I haven't pulled the trigger on any of them.

I've read a number of Swedish crime novels lately but I'm getting tired of wealthy villains who are obsessed with cleanliness and have torture chambers at tier island greenhouse or whatever the hell adler-olsen and his ilk are writing about today.

for willeford, i really love miami blues. also cockfighter and the burnt orange heresy are really good. there was recently a movie made of The Woman Chaser starring Seinfeld's David Puddy. it's fun to watch.

My fave Elmore L -- well, here are some good ones -- Out of Sight, Killshot, Bandits, 52 Pickup, Pronto (i believe this is the first Raylan Givens novel?), LaBrava. I'm reading "Touch" now and it is enjoyable so far!

What Swedish/Scandinavian stuff do you like? I've not read much. A few of the Martin Beck novels and a couple Wallanders.

i never really fuck with the swedes for that precise reason lol, i lean toward crime shit that maybe has /some/ real-world social relevance

cosign all those leonards and also nominate road dogs. have never been able to find willeford at the library!

along similar lines, nomar have u heard of ross thomas? he's great and hugely underrated

Ross Thomas is good! Lots of political dirty work.

one thing about ross thomas though, is that sometimes his books feel a bit slow. like he spends the first 2/3 setting things up and putting all the gears in motion with (usually) a large number of characters moving towards separate purposes, and it's not until the last third that they become intensely gripping.

hey ian thx for the recs though I guess my question was muddled, I was asking abt similar authors. I'll check into Ross thomas!

I really like wallander and the beck stuff. I think some of the post-dragon tattoo writers lean towards torture porn a bit too much, as much as I like some of the humor in the adler-olsen books. ive heard good things about arne dahl.

I just read nightfall by David goodis and was entranced btw.

OH, SIMILAR STUFF!!!!!
goodis is great when he is great... shoot the piano player and black friday are both great ones.

i'm a big lawrence block fan, especially the novels about his alkie private detective Matt Scudder.
also a huge westlake/richard stark fan. the parker novels you have read, yes?

i'll look at my shelf when i get home.
i really enjoyed the four novels written by Gene Kerrigan about cops & lowlives in Ireland.

for heavier vibes i also liked "Autumn, All The Cats Return" by Phillipe Georget which deals a lot with the french/algerian war. (set in the present but with flashbacks etc.)

Granta in the UK recently put Sciascia's stuff all back into print in English translation. If you like crime fic and you haven't read Sciascia please do he is fucking amazing

i will look into that!

also i read a few of Manchette's novels last year, they were great.

I've heard about those books but could never find them, ty for the tip

re lawrence block I recently read 8 million ways to die and liked it, tried walk among the tombstones and couldn't get into it - what are the best scudders

i like 8 million ways to die a lot. that's one of my favorites. i recommend people start with "When The Sacred Gin Mill Closes" -- it was my first and hooked me hard.
I think a couple of the Manchettes were recently published in new translations via City Lights -- the Prone Gunman and uhhh.... one of the others.

Iirc the reason sciascia's name has been stuck for decades in my head as a 'look for' is because Calvino praises him in 'six memos for the next millennium'

I've read pair of stark's parkers (sparkers?): killtown (which is actually "the score" iirc?) and of course the hunter. Gotta read more. Killtown was ridiculous but amazing.

Got my dad a Kerrigan novel, I should look into him.

Read manchette's "3 to kill" and dang it was good. too bad about the movie adaptation of "the prone gunman".

Sciascia's "To each his own" is great. the ending is about as cheery as "the friends of eddie coyle".

Is Killtown the one where they blow up a whole town, more or less? My fave Parker novels are probably The Green Eagle Score, The Outfit, The Sour Lemon Score.. but I have time in my life for all of them. Even the ones he wrote after he resurrected the character many years later. My favorite NON-PARKER stark/westlake novels are probably... 357, Lemons Never Lie, and The Ax. The Ax is kind of the bleakest thing I've ever read. A black comedy so black as to be devastating.

The Hot Rock is also fun.

I've heard about those books but could never find them, ty for the tip

I found out about him quite by accident: finished the true-crime book I was reading while I was out of town and stopped by a local used book store to grab something else, found the Godine Double Detective volume of his from the 70s and got my mind blown - then I was working w/the Granta ppl (obligatory disclosure) and they sent me all these new paperback editions and I've been feasting on them. He is seriously incredible. highly recommend this one.

You might enjoy "Nobody's Angel" by Jack Clark. Originally self-published by a Chicago cab driver, later reprinted by Hard Case Crime. Pretty grim.

you know who I like generally is loren d estleman. whiskey river and the amos walker stuff I've read is good. motown was ok but for all its attempt at sweep felt a little thin.

i've never read him. i'll try!
i never got into James Lee Burke. I think I tried to watch that "Electric Mist" movie w Tommy Lee Jones twice and could not stay awake.

also, i am a big fan of Paul Cain.

The Axe is amazing.

There's an American Library (or whatever they're called) collection of 3 or 4 David Goodis novels that's really great.

Also recommended: Ian Rankin.

I remember describing the plot of The Ax to my Dad once as we were talking about what we were reading. He seemed unamused.

The Hook has a similar feel, and is also interestingly self-reflexive in that it's about a pulp novelist.

The Ax by Westlake, right?

I can recommend Kitakata's Tha Cage for a Japanese spin on crime.

excellent thread revive

ian OTM re Paul Cain ... Fast One is cut from the same OG Black Mask cloth as Red Harvest ... be careful, though, some recent editions are shoddily edited and typeset

in a somewhat similar vein, Horace McCoy's Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is like a longer, more pretentious Jim Thompson novel ... not as coherent as They Shoot Horses, Don't They? but more entertaining

really glad ppl were so responsive to the initial bump, all the suggestions have been fascinating imo

I think I tried to watch that "Electric Mist" movie w Tommy Lee Jones twice and could not stay awake.

best thing about that movie was levon helm as the ghost of general hood. i was just reading about it on wikipedia and i forgot there was another burke adaptation, heaven's prisoners, w/alec baldwin. back in baldwin's post-vv underrated leading man/pre-comedic sleazeball supporting guy phase.

lol raymond chandler is top 10 trending on U.S. twitter today - at first it was bc of some like bachelorette contestant w the same name but it's been subsumed by actual chandler discussion

lol

I just finished re-reading The High Window, The Lady in the Lake, and The Little Sister ... I had forgotten how much the last of those is influenced by Chandler's Hollywood experiences and how nasty he is about the movie biz

Thanks for the revive. Am wondering if anyone can recommend novels about terrorists, esp. left-wing ones. I raided my library's booksale and found a novel about infiltrating an animal rights group. Can't remember what the book was but it got me thinking I'd like to read more plots like this.

could this have been "Oh No, Not My Baby" by Russell James? I never finished it, but there was something like that.

Joe Lansdale's "Savage Season" touches on left wing terrorism. His Hap and Leonard series is also a good answer to the Willeford/Leonard question. James Crumley and Jon A. Jackson also fit in there for me.

I've been meaning to get more of the NYROB-republished Georges Simenons - I read 'Dirty Snow' years ago and it was fantastic. Hyper-bleak European noir.

Read the first Ross MacDonald Lew Archer novel last week, 'Moving Target' - it's good, fascinating how it straddles modern elements - race issues, homosexuality, etc. - while being set firmly in the postwar era.

Started "Tishomingo Blues" because of the Leonard poll.

Am wondering if anyone can recommend novels about terrorists, esp. left-wing ones.

Try 'The Good Terrorist' by Doris Lessing

just started reading my first wahloo/sjowall novel today, the laughing policeman.

on the leftist terrorist tip, have not read but really want to: alan burns' docu-novel about the angry brigade

Laughing Policeman is great; how are you liking it? I also enjoy the movie w Walter Mathau, which I saw before I read the book.

--

Does anyone ever feel like reading crime fiction has made it more difficult to love crime/thriller/detective films? I know there are lots of great noir films; I don't dispute that. But I feel so often that many movies, especially more recent ones, are just too obvious, or direct, or hackneyed. which is probably an overly negative assessment, and I wonder if my standards would be lower if i hadn't spend the last x years reading crime fiction and mysteries etc. maybe things would seem more tense or new/exciting to me.

I do. It's not as bad as the huge gap between written science fiction and movie science fiction though.

I think you're right. I'd actually really love a solid noir thriller/detective/crime cable series, maybe like an adaptation of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series or something similarly ambitious.

my favorite crime pics are mostly '50s-'70s. In recent years no one even seems to be trying. you get certain noir tropes in movies but a lot of them are wasted in superhero movies, where a lot of things and time are wasted imo.

we are in a golden age of crime shows on TV tbh

some are deceased like the bridge (season 2 mostly) but broadchurch, happy valley, true detective season 2 (haters to the left idc), mr robot to an extent (albeit nontraditional), fargo, top of the lake...good times for all that

american crime too to an extent

Sciascia's Day of the Owl is talky and short on action but it taught me more about the Mafia in 120 pages than everything else I've read and viewed ... it seems very much of a specific moment in Italian history; I can't imagine how hard it must have hit its original audience

Equal Danger is also talky and short on action but more suspenseful and more of a pure mystery-as-novel-of-ideas, like a collaboration between Borges, Dostoevsky, and Simenon ... it snapped my head back in ways I don't expect from crime fiction

definitely going back for more

there are certainly good crime tv shows on these days, far above the law & order/CSI standard nonsense. i particularly enjoyed "Line of Duty" recently. Both seasons, but I think the second season even more. One thing I appreciated about it was its density. It wasn't afraid to have lots of things going on and lots of characters. I think a lot of crime and thriller films (and tv too) are too streamlined, without enough weight or density to the plotting and characters.

this layering and somewhat oblique approach to storytelling is also something i appreciate about the current season of true detective. if it's that hard to follow (which it apparently is for some people!) maybe they just need to put down their phones and actually WATCH it? idk.

i am really interested in this new season of TD, moreso for the people who are actively angry abt it on my facebook wall (i should start a thread about what white folks get equally angry about on facebook: cecil the lion, ferguson, true detective season 2, charleston, conan o'brien losing the tonight show, etc. i'm white btw.)

i guess what i meant w/r/t a cable series was an adaptation that took on a dense crime novel and let it unfold slowly. i think those kerr novels would be perfect, though there's one scene involving a grape crushing machine in the third novel that would probably make people stop watching.

my dream is a true detective style ongoing series covering alan furst's espionage novels but i think that's probably out of the realm of possibility.

What do y'all think of red riding series by d peace? Thinking about reading the 2nd one.

i read the first and i liked it well enough but not enough to read the others. it was a bit too on the nose somehow though dang it sure seems prescient in the wake of shit like jimmy savile.

Kpunk seemed to feel it didn't come into its own till the 2nd one
Plus it's abt Yorkshire ripper who I was just reading about recently

Bernie Gunther novels would be amazing on HBO but I imagine the budget would be off the charts.

the red riding series is fucking great, albeit occasionally incomprehensible

(the movies were p good too imo although they made some things a bit too simple in reaction to the absurd sprawl of the four books)

xposts to ian: yeah, the laughing policeman was really good. liked the low-key portrayal of the grinding mundanity of the investigation and the strained interactions of the cops on the job. did not know about the matthau adaptation... bruce dern too!

followed that up with another swedish crime novel from around the same time by a guy called olle hogstrand about a criminal gang using maoist terrorism as a cover for blackmailing a tax dodging socialist prime minister. was okay, if a bit convoluted.

also...

I was looking for novels about bombers, like Weather Underground or Unabomber bombers.

probably not what you're after (& not "crime fiction" per se), but...
christie malry's own double entry

Am wondering if anyone can recommend novels about terrorists, esp. left-wing ones.

Dostoevsky's Demons, Burgher's Theatre by Nadine Gordimer and The Moro Affair by Sciascia (not so much a novel, more of an account)

I never feel Sciascia as a writer of crime fiction - there is v little in terms of procedural, things don't really get solved in any significant way.

I tried Demons, except the translation I had (by Constance Garnett) was called The Possessed and I believe dates back to the 19th or early 20th Century and is now not that highly regarded - got a better one you could recommend?

I never feel Sciascia as a writer of crime fiction - there is v little in terms of procedural, things don't really get solved in any significant way.

well yeah that's kind of the point.

To Each His Own, the Sciascia novel I read yesterday, is certainly free of police procedure ... even the amateur detection is pretty shaky, and at the end the story goes off the genre rails altogether when SPOILER ALERT the detective disappears with no explanation and in the aftermath his friends just sit around talking trash about him

I can't wait to read more by this guy, but yeah, he doesn't observe the conventions very well at all

More typical crime fiction I've read recently:

John Sandford, Winter Prey -- long on chasing and shooting, short on plot complications and sympathetic characters; there were some good action scenes, but I doubt I'll read more of the series

Jeffery Deaver, the first two Lincoln Rhyme books -- I'm tired of the whole 90s serial killer thing, so the first novel didn't do much for me; the second, once he had all his series characters set up and could just run with them, was more fun and more suspenseful; I'm looking into the third now, but that might do it for me

Much better stuff mentioned earlier in the thread: the entire Wahloo/Sjowall series is great; Alan Furst, though spy fiction rather than crime fiction, is also excellent; I support nomar's idea of a Furst TV series, but to be perfect it would need to have been shot in black and white around the time they made Casablanca

Fans of The Demons might be interested in Camus' adaptation for the stage, a much quicker read

I never feel Sciascia as a writer of crime fiction - there is v little in terms of procedural, things don't really get solved in any significant way.

well yeah that's kind of the point.

― Joan Crawford Loves Chachi, Thursday, 30 July 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Said in response to him being listed on a crime fiction thread.

I've been enjoying Sandford in a very low-rent, airplane-trash kind of way. He's not as good as, say, Thomas Perry, but when you need a few hundred pages of chases and shootouts, he'll get the job done. He really doesn't seem to do much with the Minnesota setting of his books, though - I don't know any more about the region (other than street names) after a half dozen of his books than I did before.

I tried Demons, except the translation I had (by Constance Garnett) was called The Possessed and I believe dates back to the 19th or early 20th Century and is now not that highly regarded - got a better one you could recommend?

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, 30 July 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read Richard Pevear/Larissa Volokhonsky. I'd be vary of reading any criticisms of older translations (saying this because I've done it myself in the past). Often they are right but Garnett has her defenders, many criticisms are driven by the need to get 'new' translations in the market and keep things churning along. xp

I was looking for novels about bombers, like Weather Underground or Unabomber bombers.

I guess the earliest classic novel on this theme is Conrad's The Secret Agent

Am curious about Reed Farrel Coleman: big-upped by Pelecanos, drives a big-rig on the side, sounds like working-class noir. Anyone?

― Well, because whatever happened changed him. (Dr. Superman), Monday, 28 June 2010 23:27 (5 years ago) Permalink

5 years late and god knows if Dr Superman is here (where oh where can he be??)

but i am reading the first of Coleman's "Moe Prager" novels now-Walking the Perfect Square--I had honestly never heard of him (i wasn't closely following him at the time he had his "break thru" with the James Deans.) I saw him speak on a panel abt "hardboiled" and "noir" fiction and he seemed quite smart and well spoken. I also have a soft spot for crime fiction set in NYC. so, really, i'm not very far into the book but I've enjoyed the first couple-dozen pages and I'm sure i'll have more thoughts later.

just started the last good kiss by james crumley and shit is LIT

more crumley on deck - the mexican tree duck - as well as a ross thomas called the fools in town are on our side that i've been trying to find forever (w/o resorting to amazon) and finally was able to request from the library. copy is a 1971 first edition that's 16 years older than i am.

I've been reading Wallace Stroby's stuff this week 'cause he's from Jersey. Also recently read Thomas Perry's newest, Forty Thieves, which was good and took some surprising turns.

just googled this stroby dude and aight, that shit's definitely going on the goodreads. jersey origin also a plus in my book, even if it's central rather than my native north

what would be a good book of his to start with?

His first, The Barbed Wire Kiss, is very good, and it's a stand-alone. Gone 'Til November is another, also really solid. Later he started writing about a sort of female Parker named Crissa Stone, and I've read two of those - The Devil's Share and Cold Shot To The Heart. They're not quite as good - there were a couple of scenes that seemed cut and pasted from one book to the next, and the character has certain flaws I don't love (she always seems to trust a new partner who then snaps or burns her).

Bought the original Berlin Noir Bernie Gunther trilogy on sale from Amazon. Still holding up pretty well halfway through the first one, only knocks are the self-conscious Chandlerism asides (about dames' bodies, etc.) that don't seem to fit with a 1930s German PI's internal monologue.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UEKWYRI/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

holy shit this is good

Ooooh

I've read six novels by Pascal Garnier in the last month or so -- some are more distinctly criminal in focus than others but they've all been very good. Moody like Simenon, surreal like Manchette -- that's my reductive line I guess. The ones I've read are mostly about people with very mundane lives -- retirees, an old guy with cancer, a writer, a family man.. How these peoples lives change in unexpected ways and they become pushed beyond their limits in some way or another. The sort of noir that is less about a willing criminal (though there are some of those don't get me wrong) but about people whose lives are hitting bottom in some way, getting sucked under by gravity and their own stupidity or short-sightedness or greed.

Sorry, rambling here.

I also just got in the mail Suburra by Carlo Bonini & Giancarlo de Cataldo -- newly translated by Anthony Shugar and published by Europa's World Noir imprint. I began it last night and it seems very good at 50 pages in. Diffuse storylines, lots of characters -- the psychological depth and context that's missing from the more traditional procedural or PI novel. Some of my favorite crime novels are those that focus on the cops and criminals in equal measure. Gene Kerrigan is great for that. It's more powerful to watch the plot play out if there's some history and emotional weight to it.

Since it doesn't look like I've mentioned it in this thread, other recent reads include ---

-The Jacob Asch novels by Arthur Lyons -- PI in southern california, a bit Ross Macdonald but with a wider breadth of characters and scenarios -- not just the rich with fucked up families.

-Finished reading all the Massimo Carlotto that's been translated. The last few Alligator books are very excellent and have continuing plot threads running among them. Also read Poisvonville and Deaths Dark Abyss. I preferred the former because the plot's focus on institutional corruption was so well thought out and well done. It's gotten me excited to read Suburra because it also deals with corruption among the Italian political class re: the mafia, gambling, land development etc. Between Poisonville and the Garnier's I've been reading its been a nice little break from my normal low-brow diet.

THE TWO NICK PETRIE BOOKS ARE MUST READS. already can't wait for the next one. Jack Reacher + a healthy dose of PTSD is just what the doctor ordered.

scott are you a john d macdonald/travis mcgee fan?
i read a couple of those recently and i like 'em. good beach bum PI stuff.

also totally addicted to C.J. BOX and will read all by him eventually. even his non-series books are really good.

all crime writers love travis mcgee. i read some when i was a kid but haven't read them since. maybe i should read them again. i'm not like a crime expert or anything.

i felt like i should finally get around to reading a couple of them. they're quick and generally not tooooo heavy, but not silly either. the kinda thing i need to read to take a break from the grim stuff.

see those books everywhere for virtually no money, figured why not.

i really dig a lot of the italian crime fiction i've read. even lighter fare that's less mafia/camorra-centric like andrea camilleri. suburra sounds right up my alley.

been working thru Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley, which is just a great comfort read like a lot of his novels and like a lot of other long-running crime series.

I've been slowly re-reading the McGee series, with mixed reactions. I like all John D. Macdonald's stuff -- for a pulp writer of that era he had a stronger social conscience than most -- but in the McGee books the benevolent Playboy-style sexism sometimes gets hard to take. When Macdonald is on his game, the stories are as tough and fast and tricky as the best of the Parker or Reacher books. I picked up Pale Gray for Guilt the other day and had to put it down after the first 50 pages or so because the set-up was so grim and pathetic (small-time marina owner worn down and destroyed by real estate developers). I'll go back shortly for McGee's retribution.

Yeah, that's one of the things that hasn't aged well for sure -- the casual sexism is a bit cringey.

Nomar -- Suburra was made into a successful film in Italy, and Netflix is working to create a series from it. I believe you can still stream the Italian film on Netflix, so my plan is book -> film -> tv show, assuming I like this book as much as I think I will.

I'm halfway through The Long Goodbye and loving it. Such a beautiful, sad book - but it still has the fun and mystery of the earlier stories. The one-liners really cut deep here. It's the proof that he could've been better than Hammett if he'd lived longer.

Got pulled into the Michael Connelly books because of the television series and am glad I did.

Yeah, I've read about four of them and they're all solid.

Don Winslow's The Force is as good as people have been saying, too. It starts badly (character in a prison cell literally thinking "How did it come to this?" then flashback and we're off and running) but the scope of it is impressive as hell.

I want to check out The Force; one of the things I loved best abt the Power Of The Dog & The Cartel was the breadth of the characters, characterization, plotlines.

I could never get into Michael Connelly, but admittedly I didn't try super hard. I tried two different Bosch novels after enjoying the tv show, but at one point I remember thinking that I was 100+ pages into something and not much had happened yet, which was frustrating -- but my biggest problem w M.C. is that his characters don't speak w contractions very much and it drives me fucking crazy.

I wanna try the Winslow but I kind of hate the every-paragraph-a-single-sentence style - him and David Peace and Ellroy.

The excerpt was good, though - is it bearable for a whole novel?

Connelly is good at twisting and turning things but i feel like his books aren't very memorable. i have no memory of them a day after finishing one anyway. and maybe you can say this about a lot of crime people. if you read enough of their books. i also just don't feel any great love for Bosch. but he's an ace plotter and i think this explains why crime buffs and other crime writers love him so much.

I wanna try the Winslow but I kind of hate the every-paragraph-a-single-sentence style - him and David Peace and Ellroy.

The excerpt was good, though - is it bearable for a whole novel?

He doesn't do that as much in his big-sprawling-epics as he did in, say, Savages (which I kinda hated).

Winslow is deft w/plot & character but for my taste he deploys too much ultra-violence which of course comes w/the cartel territory. I liked his surf-scene novels. Waiting for The Force on library reserve.

Just started The Late Show, Connelly's new one. Basically agree w/Scott on him not being all that memorable though I will say his books are atmospheric, super-evocative of LA or maybe too reliant on readers being familiar with the area. Saw the first TV episode of Bosch on my last plane trip to LA (appropriately) and liked it though the actor looking nothing like I picture old Harry.

I didn't really get on with M Connelly. I like sandford way better (but I am from the twin cities and miss it so there's a porn aspect to sandford for me)

What about John Connolly though? I read his first Charlie Parker novel and have not followed up but would be interested in opinions. Seems like he also jumps the fence into horror at times?

i don't know nothing about the twin cities but i love sandford. especially virgil. i have the newest hardcover and its next on my list. although davenport is a u.s. marshal now so he can get out of minnesota more in the future. might cut back on the twin cities porn quotient.

i need more hardboiled women to root for though. there must be some 30 book crime series with a cool female anti-hero, right? maybe i should give dr. kay scarpetta a try.

the description of the linda barnes books sounds intriguing. also, there are 12 of them:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/26/top-10-female-detectives-in-fiction

I like Sandford too. Every once in a while I'll just grab one of the Prey books from my local library without worrying too much about sequence. Haven't read any of the Virgil books yet.

i like the Sandford books but when you read too many in a row the formula starts to wear a bit thin. Of the mega-selling crime/thriller guys I gotta say that prob Lee Child is my fave.

xpost to Scott -- what about Sue Grafton? Those are supposed to be pretty good, and definitely not "woman who owns a flower shop solves crimes" stylee.

books that lee child really likes that i have never read:

los alamos - joseph kanon

mark billingham - sleepyhead

the maisie dobbs series - jacqueline winspear

a place of execution - val mcdermid

the power of the dog - don winslow

i went around the corner and looked at the linda barnes books. didn't seem like my kinda books. plus, all the copies that guy had were very well-used. i can't really buy crime paperbacks if they make me think about how many bathrooms they've been in before they got to me.

i did buy THE BRICKLAYER by Noah Boyd. looked cool. child/patterson/cornwell blurbs on the front. i should really get some cornwell books. i'll bet i'd like them.

not a living author but what abt Ruth Rendell? The couple of hers I've read were dark as fuck and not in a chic way

this looks like a cool list. She Rides Shotgun looks like something I would enjoy:

https://www.booklistonline.com/The-Year-s-Best-Crime-Novels-2017/pid=8853316

but, seriously, if you are a lee child fan, you have to read the two nick petrie books. even lee child loves them.

oh but yes i would read ruth rendell. i should.

i basically read crime paperbacks when i need a break from some long sci-fi paperback i'm reading. just for a change of pace. i can be a slow sci-fi reader.

Started the first Nick Petrie book last night, it's an entertaining enough quick page-turner but not sure it's very good. So repetitive and the writing is by the numbers.

Some of the asides ('he wasn't sure if the gun signified a concealed carrying citizen - OR A THUG') read as pretty right-wing fan servicey.

ooh, NYRB just re-published In A Lonely Place
https://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics/products/in-a-lonely-place?variant=40853415367

Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford series is very reliable, and her stand-alone suspense novels are strong stuff, sometimes veering close to horror. Some of the creepiest ones appeared under her Barbara Vine pseudonym.

I've read a few Joseph Kanon novels, including Los Alamos, and they've all been good. He's more of an espionage guy than a crime guy, usually using period settings, sort of a more expansive Allan Furst. Apparently he worked in publishing for a long time before starting to write his own novels, and he gives a sense of knowing exactly what's he's doing -- strong characters, intricate plotting, and nice polished prose.

Great thread, just now found it. For non-genre layered around grimy crimey center, I like John Darnielle's novels, also 2666 (haven't read The Savage Detectives) Also Dusty's, incl.---Spoiler Alert---The Idiot, ultimately. Especially enjoyed David Magarshack's translations of several (haven't read his version of The Devils yet).
Want to get into fairly recent genre, but can't decide where to start. Do like this description of the Dublin Murder Squad series:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/03/tana-frenchs-intimate-crime-fiction
And that recent New Yorker piece by Bernie G. stan Jane Kramer.

the Tana French books are nice, I haven't read them all tho.

At least a few of those sound good; I'll look for them at my library.

Highly recommended Broken Harbour of the French books - works as a standalone. Faithful Place (which I'm reading) seems just as good so far.

Also enjoyed Oliver Harris's books (though he is an acquaintance).

I rate Michael Connelly a bit higher than most people here - to me he's the most consistently reliable American crime author of the last twenty years or so, even if he can't match a Leonard or a Higgins or an Ellroy in terms of narrative and linguistic razzledazzle (in fact, I find his unadorned authorial voice, combined with that mastery of plotting, extremely pleasing - relaxing almost.) I'm surprised that Ian doesn't like the (relatively) slow burn of the Bosch novels because the way they're set up often reminds me of Lawrence Block's Scudder series (which remains the gold standard for this kind of thing, imho).

^^ OTM re: Connelly. (Also, I love looking up the locations on google streetview as I'm reading.)

Haven't read any Scudder. What's a good place to start?

The L.A. Review of Books has a good interview with Connelly.

The Scudder books are best read in order - there's quite a lot of continuity - though the early ones are much thinner than the later instalments. Block took a break from the series for a while and then came back with the 'When The Sacred Ginmill Closes' which represented a quantum leap in terms of their quality, and that would probably be a very good place to start. After that one, they're p much all good to great.

Thanks!

I don't know oliver harris, except on twitter, but i also rate him very highly indeed

Thanks for posting that Connelly interview. I knew about his background as a journalist and figured that was part of his method. But even after reading most of his books I didn't realize how deeply his novels are reported vs made up. Got me thinking about George V Higgins who's more writerly as Ward says upthread, and also worked as a criminal attorney while writing his novels. Higgins' dialogue-heavy style must have been influenced by years of interviewing clients, interrogating witnesses, eliciting testimony, taking depositions etc. He heard those voices every day.

Yeah, I love all the weird arcana in Connelly's books, about police bureaucracy, where lawyers go to eat, weird LA history, etc. And he's great at putting that information into the story, rather than "And here's some research I did earlier..."

I started digging into the old ones recently (I only started reading with The Closers), and Angels Flight is really excellent. Unusually for a Bosch book there's lots of background plot going on (while Bosch solves the case, there's a city riot out of Day of the Locust). Plus - given it's 1999 publishing date - there's a lot of fun dated stuff about the internet (Kiz spends two pages explaining website links to Harry).

the most recent tana french book, the trespassers, was excellent

This is the only time I'll mention this here:

I've written a book. It's called FIFTY FOOT DROP; it's a crime novel about Taylor Bailey, a rock musician whose band is doing pretty well, until their bus slides off the road in the middle of nowhere, leaving him and his brother (the band's drummer) close to crippled and the band unable to tour or make money. Stuck on his mother's couch with a rapidly growing stack of medical bills, he finds himself hanging out with a guy he knew in the old days, who just happens to need a partner for a robbery he's got planned...

It's available in paperback and for Kindle, and you can get it at this link:

http://smarturl.it/50footdrop (that link will take you to your country's Amazon site, or default to the US version if you're somewhere weird)

It's $15 for the physical paperback, $5 for the Kindle version, and Amazon offers a deal where if you buy the physical book, you can get the Kindle version for 99 cents.

Here are some nice things other people have said about it:

"Not Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n' Roll, but Sex, Crime and Rock ’n' Roll. Freeman’s insider knowledge of the music industry gives this fresh Jersey noir extra heavy metal."—Ethan Iverson, The Bad Plus

"An even cursory glance at what we had so piquantly once called 'newspapers' will show that while truth is stranger than fiction it's not nearly as well written. Freeman's FIFTY FOOT DROP, mixing modalities he knows well—music, metal, Jersey and crime—manages to make one hell of a hardboiled treatise on all of the above. And then some. Freeman's not a pretty man and thank god, neither is his writing."—Eugene S. Robinson, author, A LONG SLOW SCREW and FIGHT, OR EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ASS KICKING BUT WERE AFRAID TO GET YOUR ASS KICKED FOR ASKING

"FIFTY FOOT DROP plunges us into a sinister underworld of shady deals, uneasy alliances, and a big score that goes wrong in all the right ways. Freeman brings a convincing expertise and perceptive eye to both the machinations of the music business and the New Jersey neighborhood of working class immigrants where this engrossing crime story unfolds."—Scott Von Doviak, author, CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL (Hard Case Crime, 2018)

Don Winslow's The Force is as good as people have been saying, too. It starts badly (character in a prison cell literally thinking "How did it come to this?" then flashback and we're off and running) but the scope of it is impressive as hell.

Just finished this and agree. Pretty reminiscent of Richard Price, in the detail, research, and rhythm.

i keep seeing people talking about "the force" and i'm reading it now, though i'm not very far in. i also read "the cartel," and first of all, i'll say that both books are very readable. there's something compelling about them that keeps me going. on the other hand, both of them, but especially "the force," are extremely cliche-ridden in their character types. maybe it wasn't as obvious in "the cartel" because he's writing about slightly less typical characters, but "the force" really comes off like all the characters are based directly on characters from "the wire." and i really can't deal with the constantly blatantly racist dialogue through the whole thing, even if it's "true to life" and the main character has a black girlfriend who calls him "baby." richard price is so much better in creating believable characters and especially believable dialogue. maybe i'll grow to like it more as i keep going but i just wanted to vent this while people are actually talking about the book.

i didn't really like the last richard price book ("the whites") that much but the run from "clockers" through "lush life" is all classic

I know what you mean about the types, the familiar racism, and so on. I wondered if its popularity this summer was it being a throwback.

In the end, I found it as compelling as The Shield, and in a similar way it defends itself by being that mix of bad cops - corrupt, racist, on the take - with exceptional psychological/physical skill sets.

I liked The Whites, and Lush Life, but have never read anything else by Price.

clockers might be the best piece of modern crime fiction, you should read it

Honestly, I've seen just enough of the movie versions of Clockers and Freedomland that now I don't want to read the books. Dumb, I know.

the books are so rich, dude you gotta read them

price is one of my alltime faves

the movie of clockers made me so mad, it sucks

Wanderers is great too. I loved Samaritan, Lush Life and The Whites - which is better to try next, Freedomland or Clockers?

clockers is better but they're both worth reading

finished up the surprisingly good serial killer novel SHADOW MAN by Alan Drew, which feels like a fairly straightforward tale at first pass (laconic Southern California police officer in 1986 investigating a Night Stalker-esque murderer, recently divorced, rebellious teenage daughter, burgeoning relationship with a local assistant medical examiner), but reveals much more interesting shades as it continues on. It's an easy out to write a tough, smart cop character, maybe even easier still to make him flawed, but to make him flawed and vulnerable in the extremely specific way that occurs here is pretty interesting and could be considered risky, but it succeeds.

Better still is how every character is given some humanity, even the most reprehensible pair (though the most reprehensible isn't even the serial killer.) I also like a novel with people who are extremely smart and understanding and who don't get idiot-plotted into unrealistic narrative trajectories. and it manages to pack in a lot of character history into its 340+ pages without stalling the cat-and-mouse game with the killer. pretty good stuff!

regarding SUBURRA as discussed upthread, everything i hear about the series (Suburra: Blood on Rome) suggests it's extremely good.

richard price is so much better in creating believable characters and especially believable dialogue. maybe i'll grow to like it more as i keep going but i just wanted to vent this while people are actually talking about the book

otm on the force, it's expertly paced and super-readable but after awhile feels superficial and cliched in ways that price never does

Nomar: I started the first ep a few days ago and I think I like it! The only problem I'm having is that the actors don't look like the characters I imagined when I read the book. But I'll get over it.

I've probably mentioned on this thread before that I really like Arthur Lyons. I've been reading one of his Jacob Asch socal detective novels at the rate of about one a month, interspersed with other stuff. Recommended for fans of the classic PI novel

This LA Times crime feature reads like fiction. Incredible:

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-dirty-john/

i just finished the podcast, it’s a+

better discussed in the true crime thread tho since it is a real case

Started Scott Frank's Shaker - thought it was a recommendation from here but maybe it was just an Amazon recommendation. It's decent, part Get Shorty-style Elmore Leonard and part Tarantino.

Finding the racial aspect of a lot of crime fiction getting worse lately, this included (though maybe that would shift), heavy on 'evil thug gangbanger' cliches even on a level above the modern Mike Hammer pulp.

I'm up to 1963 in the Ed McBains. the most recent 3 weren't available digitally for some reason but the omnibus containing all of them was pennies on amazon marketplace.

but, unfortunately, they had been collected in the wrong order. the first one had people reacting to a death that only happened in the second one. (this was apparently the english release order, which didn't happen until about 20 years after they were written)

I just finished Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Before that I read his Woman in the Dark. It was strange to think of all cliches and tropes of hard-boiled fiction and film noir that have accumulated since these works were new.

I always suspected they were already (black mask school) cliches and tropes when he wrote them. There's an almost parodic tone to Hammett.

I wonder to what degree Hammett intended his characters/scenarios to be parodic; he was writing crime fiction for at least five years before the Maltese Falcon was published, and whether we like or not, these simplistic hardman characters (and other classic tropes like the femme fatale and getting clubbed from behind) were things that sold well. I'm sure that wasn't lost on Hammett but I also don't know what his intent was. I think I have a volume of his letters and/or a biography. I guess I should get around to checking all that stuff out, huh?

Latest reads for me include:
Tim Baker "Fever City" -- loved this and want to read it again just to make sure I have everything properly sorted. Three storylines told achronoligically revolving around a group of sometimes overlapping characters. Thinking about parody and tropes, there are many knowing winks and such here. You get the Hollywood millionare sleazebag with unhappy wife and family scandal, you get a kidnapped child, you get the inside scoop on the JFK conspiracy (lots of fun jokes/references for even the most surface-level JFK nut) -- it's really great. And very clearly informed by the tropes of crime fiction imo.

Peter Rabe "The Out is Death" (80s black lizard reprint) -- I've read a bit lately about Rabe being one of the better Gold Medal writers of the fifties/sixties. Based on this I'm not sure how much further I'm going to investigate, though I have two on the shelf so I may read one or both.) It was fine but far from gripping or original. Gangster stuff.

Dan Marlowe "The Vengeance Man" (another 80s black lizard) -- Liked this one. More in a Jim Thompson vein in that it's dealing with more or less normal people and not professional criminals. All the small town sleaze and backstabbing you could want. trigger warning: misogyny.

Koogs -- how are you liking the early McBains? I haven't read nearly all of the 87th precinct novels but I do prefer the early ones. They seem a bit leaner and less likely to have bad sex scenes. They can be a bit repetitive, but the best ones are great. Aside: reading Ken Bruen's Inspector Brandt series as a foul-mouthed & corrupt UK parody of the 87th Precinct novels makes a lot of sense. The main character is even an Ed McBain completist.

getting clubbed from behind

this is my favorite trope in all crime fiction, i get gleeful when that pops up in any novel. the novel i was reading last night had a character going into a situation where he expected to get clubbed from behind, then didn't, he exhaled in relief, but then he actually did get clubbed from behind.

I read that Tana French book, The Trespassers, and liked it a lot. Might start digging into some of her earlier stuff.

I recently bought the Library of America Ross Macdonald anthology - 11 of the 18 Lew Archer books are included, in a three-volume set - and have read three books so far: The Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Chill, and The Far Side of the Dollar. I think I like the last one best, but what's kinda hilarious to me about all three is how they consistently position Archer, a depressed middle-aged man, as the defender of Today's Youth against their shitty parents.

Nomar: Getting clubbed from behind is 100% classic. I think my LEAST favorit trope is serial killer sending taunting notes to the police. been reminded of this constantly due to the subway ads for The Snowman certainly does not help.

Unperson: I still haven't read all of the Archer novels, but I enjoyed them a lot more when I didn't read them consecutively -- Need a break otherwise the stories get to be quite samey.

yeah serial killer notes are never good and i hate to say it, but they're more interesting IRL because they're so insane. in crime fiction they try to present them as some kind of macabre poetry that comes off as completely removed from any recognizable pathology. you can't top the Zodiac, in other words.

> Koogs -- how are you liking the early McBains?

it's not really my genre, but i'm a big fan of nypd blue and homicide LOTS and the 87th Precinct is exactly that kind of ensemble-cast police drama (maybe even the first). they are certainly of their time, but are fun, quick reads. (i wonder if the dvds are available anywhere?)

i have about 40 left to read.

Serial killer crime novels are usually just supervillain comics for people who think they're too grown up for comic books (they have the same outlandish names, the themed crimes, the apparently preternatural abilities), which is why the movie version of The Joker is so popular, combining the two strands into one.

Just finished rereading Thompson's The Grifters, which I last read about 20 years ago, and it was significantly odder than I remembered. Not as odd as the one he wrote with the talking dog (The Golden Gizmo, I think), but pretty odd nonetheless.

the novel i was reading last night had a character going into a situation where he expected to get clubbed from behind, then didn't, he exhaled in relief, but then he actually did get clubbed from behind.

This is excellent. Though it always bugs me when people get knocked out in novels/movies, but still wake up able to remember everything up to the moment they got clobbered. Head trauma doesn't work that way! You lose the memories leading up to the cudgeling, too.

I always thought Archer's "oh, a gun" expression in the Maltese Falcon film was hilarious - it's sort of getting clubbed from behind from the front.

https://media.giphy.com/media/l378o6XCTSSLptWo0/giphy.gif

Patricia Cornwell is the UK Amazon deal of the day. Any recommendations? Start at the beginning?

(Ok, there are 24 in the Scarpetta series, first 6 are cheap today)

My primary recommendation would be to just say no but if you give it a try on the cheap just start with the first Scarpetta.

No is a valid option 8)

It's not like I don't have 1000 other things to read.

I think I saw something recently with her in, or someone, probably Val McD taking her up. Maybe in relation to the term "bodyfarm".

Just read John Sandford's Golden Prey. There's a whole digression about Donald Judd (part of it takes place in Marfa, Texas) and I'm a little disappointed that Lucas Davenport, a cultivated dude who dresses well, etc., doesn't know/care shit about modern art. Oh, well. It's pretty good anyway. Not one of my favorite in the Prey series, but not as bad as the one about Juggalos.

Tana French's In the Woods is only 1.99 too!

wait, there's a Prey series book about Juggalos?? I got bored with those after reading a half dozen or so, but I would go back for sweet sweet Juggalo content.

In the Woods is good; I found it a bit slow to start but got hooked by page 70 or so.

wait, there's a Prey series book about Juggalos?? I got bored with those after reading a half dozen or so, but I would go back for sweet sweet Juggalo content.

Yeah, it's called Gathering Prey.

Thank yall for getting me to read Richard Price, finally! Lush Life is tremendous, the way he expertly steeers us through the multi-dimensional convergence of class, race, age, gender, other, in Lower East Side Post-9/11 Giuliani York* (the Quality Of Life Squad greets us at the kick-off and reappears like a reverse ice cream truck: you better have what they want, cause they got quotas). The author dispenses a lot more acerbic compassion, a lot more justice, than his people are likely to find anywhere else.
(*Wiki:"The experiences of Bratton and New York Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple were used as the inspiration of the television series The District." Never saw that, but this isn't a cop show thread; we got one of those?)

Well, it's whatever justice can be dispensed via said convergence, rather than sermonizing or gratuitous manipulation.

The cop show thread is just called "police procedurals what are your faves" iirc

I loved clockers, want to read more price at some point

I should read some Price. I'm behind on a lot of things. Just getting around to Ellroy now tbh.

Price is so reliably good & immersive, one of my all-time faves. I really liked Samaritan, and I love his first book The Wanderers too

His dialogue is so good too, i love it when writers have an ear for the spoken word & can capture the ebbs & flow of natural speech

Price's post-Wanderers/pre-Clockers work is underrated I think. He was a different, weirder writer then. Bloodbrothers is a particular fave of mine

I can't remember was price a consultant or writer on the wire? I know a lot of crime writers were, and beyond the obvious similarities there's a scene in the wire that is straight up lifted from clockers (the drug dealers bumping into the cops at the cinema, which the book describes as being like when you see your teachers outside of school)

yeah he was a writer

he writes on The Deuce now as well

there are a few recycled bits - the "goodnight hoppers" scene is the other that springs to mind

Is that scene also in the film? I haven't seen it, would be interesting to compare if so

I don't think so but it's been awhile. I'm not a fan of Lee's version at all though

Ah - still I should check it out; lee is a p big blind spot for me esp considering how much I like the stuff I have seen

I mostly like the film version of Clockers a lot but it is a MESS. lots of good performances kind of wandering around a story that doesn't hit quite as hard as it could, which is disappointing considering how great the novel is.

i think the soundtrack is about 75% Seal, too.

whatever my reservations it has an all-time great opening credits sequence, though.

i never saw the movie of clockers bcz i loved the book so much i knew i’d be disappointed

This is a great interview - it used to be free though: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1431/richard-price-the-art-of-fiction-no-144-richard-price

Brief ILXor Sarah Weinman's end of year lists are always good value: https://tinyletter.com/thecrimelady/letters/the-crime-lady-090-the-crime-lists-of-2017

Thanks for the link, Chuck!
also: picked up a copy of Clockers at a used bookshop in my hometown over the Thanksgiving holiday, will get to it soonish.

report back w/your opinions, i think it's incredible

my opinions to be found exclusively itt.

currently continuing w Ellroy (i liked American Tabloid overall) with the Cold Six Thousand. Also reading a hardcase reprint of a Peter Rabe novel about a man who steals a chunk of radioactive gold an everywhere he goes people suffer from radiation sickness.

thanks for that link Chuck, lotta good recs i’ve added to my reading list

I like the bit in that Rabe where the dude with the radioactive gold goes near TVs and lights them up, freaking people out

Anyone familiar with QUEENPIN by Megan Abbott? An unnamed young woman gets taken under the wing of a tough ice cold female gangster and proceeds to learn everything from her and break a few of the rules she's laid down, at great cost to herself and others. Trying to be non-spoilery there as best as I can. The real draw is the writing, which is awe-inspiring in its creativity w/hard boiled prose and dialogue. It reminds me of MILLER'S CROSSING in its heightened and slightly alternative universe feel, approaching parody in places but so supremely accomplished that it comes off beautifully and sincerely.

Abbott's great. Sort of sad her more recent books are set in the present, but she writes so well.

i'm reading her most recent one about the teen gymnasts right now, liking it so far

Sounds good - I'll check her out for sure.

I recently read Thomas Perry's latest, The Bomb Maker, which was a very good procedural about bomb disposal officers in L.A. and a maniac who's trying to kill as many of them as possible by using their own methods against them. I tried a George V. Higgins book, At End of Day, but didn't like it at all - I know he's famous for his dialogue, but this was way too expository, to the point that the characters were saying things to each other that nobody in their position would ever say; it was straight-up "As you know, Bob" stuff. Very disappointing.

heightened and slightly alternative universe feel, approaching parody in places but so supremely accomplished that it comes off beautifully and sincerely. You might like The Yiddish Polcemen's Union, which is set in a definitely alternate universe, but close enough for a hardboiled procedural (like if Price stepped over a parallel line).

Although Chabon's maybe not quite up to Price's standard, at least here, where he can't ring as many this-universe bells. Haven't read Abbott, so can't compare, but this seems like one you might like alright.

I read the Yiddish Policemen's Union a few years back. Really enjoyed it! Still the only Chabon I've tackled to date.

Need to seek out other Abbott novels, looks like her first handful are in a similar vein to Queenpin?

Not enough gushing about Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series upthread. Read if you like equal parts procedural, interpersonal drama, faintly cockamamie conclusions, and rapturous detail. I have read 1-4, read in a review that 5 is a bit off-model and suffers for it but I’ll probably get it anyway. My favorite so far is the third, Faithful Place, but I’ve loved them all.

Loved Broken Harbour, although I agree on the ending's awkwardness - for such a long, deliberate build-up, everything gets wrapped up too quickly. Outside of that, she's Steig Larsson levels of unputdownable - but better, obviously.

Just about to start Faithful Place, after I finish the Galton Case - any thoughts on Macdonald?

'The Underground Man' and 'Black Money' are my favourites, but i still have half a dozen of his to read.

any thoughts on Macdonald

I bought that 3-volume Library of America set that has 11 of his novels (out of a total of 18). They're all good, if formulaic. I do like the persistent theme that old man Archer is somehow able to talk to The Youth and take their side against their horrible parents.

I like Megan Abbott's criticism quite a bit though I still haven't read anything! I have a copy of one of them at home though and do intend to get to it soon. Also cosign on the Tana French novels; still only read the first but it was really good.

I mean abbott has it down imo:

No one ever gave me a hard time, but every night I’d get invitations, either from the casino fixtures, the bulls, or the hard boys at the door. At first, I was too scared even to one-step with them, to give them back a little of their patter. But the better I got, the more I was willing to toss it around. At least with the prettier, slicker ones. I had a weak spot, right off, for the worst of them. The ones that still had faces worth looking at. The ones without the dented noses or cauliflower ears. Mostly, I had it for the cruising gamblers who didn’t rate with the big boys, just threw them their money every night like some nonstop tickertape parade. They were the smooth ones and I didn’t mind a little dance with them.

“So I’m guessing you’re the soft spot at the end of the day for some very sugared daddy.”

“I’m not so soft.”

“I could rub you some round edges, you give me half a sec.”

“I bet you could. From the way you’ve been chasing losses all night, I can see you’re a born grind.”

“I can take being called a grind player long as I got some odds on seeing you grind a hurdy-gurdy for me one of these eves.”

Yeah, okay, it wasn’t Lunt and Fontanne. If these fellas could really give you a line, they wouldn’t be at a casino every night, losing their shirts.

Besides I never let it get far. At the toniest joints, I’d once in a while let a butter-and-egg man buy me a steak. For his troubles, he’d get a dry kiss on the cheek. And when it paid, I went on dates with the high-stakes gees. But I never laid for one. I really felt like I could keep coasting like this, above everything. She taught me how you could move through it all and not let your feet sink in it. Not let your fine snakeskin stick in their muck.

omar little i wish we had a book club!

Let's start one! We can have our very own thread!

i would join this club or at least read the thread

cosign

let's do it!

All the Macdonald novels are good, some are excellent. Early ones like The Moving Target and The Way Some People Die are openly derivative of Chandler but with extra dirt and savagery. The Barbarous Coast stands up well among Hollywood novels. His gift for weaving complex plots around dysfunctional family histories got stronger as he went along and came to dominate the later books, with Archer's wisdom and compassion for the young superseding conventional private eye violence. The Chill is a favorite because it's not yet too gentle and its ending almost carries it over the top into horror.

down for a crime fiction book club, in a new thread or in this one

we should nominate crime fiction reading club ideas. i think the rule should be obviously something that none of us have ever read before.

This sounds fun - I'd be up for anything as long it's not epically long or a David Peace book.

I've wanted to read Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place for a while so I guess that's my nomination, but I'd be happy to try almost anything.

i could be into this

i want someone to suggest the best ed mcbain book from the approx 1000000 he wrote

there was one in our school library called ULTIMATE FISH iirc

no one read it, we just puzzled at how the title was meant to work

oh hm nominations!
i can definitely suggest some of the more enjoyable ed mcbains i have read (not nearly all of them, and mostly early ones) but then that's something i've already read.

I nominate "You Will Know Me" by Megan Abbott (since we were talking about her upthread.) (and because i have a copy waiting to be read.)

On the other end, there are classics that I've missed out on for ages and would love to read -- I've never read Brighton Rock, for instance. or The Glass Key.

I can un-nominate McBain's Let's Hear for the Deaf Man, the only one I've read, which was verrrry average. Great sense of place (of course) but the smart-alecky tone rubbed me the wrong way (Len Deighton does something similar - also annoying). Plot was nothing special. I'm guessing/hoping I picked a bad one to start with, though.

The Glass Key is amazing, iirc - would def read again.

completely unable to find any reference to ed mcbain's ULTIMATE FISH on the internet btw, so maybe it's by someone else :(

(no searches even turning up a thriller w/this name: either cookery books or books abt extreme angling)

McBerenstain

maybe it's his "the wind from nowhere"

Ed McBain's ULTIMATE PHISH?

McBain:

Sadie When She Died is the one that i see in all the best-of lists.

King's Ransom is the one Kurosawa filmed as High and Low.

i've read the first 16 (and a couple of later ones) and they are all like an episode of Homicide or NYPD Blue.

lol fair

i think i read "Ice" and that's a pretty good description iirc

https://dyn4.media.titanbooks.com/products/6864/120-SoNudeSoDead.jpg

(i have no idea what this is like but it's a better title than ULTIMATE FISH imo)

omg

O_O

Yeah I've noticed that his titles are either really basic like "cops" or "the gun" or they're really odd

as evan hunter he wrote an interesting piece for sight and sound when i worked there, about working with hitchcock

the experience was exciting and hardgoing and didn't last long (nor did his paragraphs)

(to clarify, i loved homicide and nypd blue and that ensemble thing that they did was pretty much invented by mcbain's 87th precinct novels, 40 years earlier.)

I like Ed McBain but his sex scenes are REALLY bad so

His Evan Hunter book 'Last Summer' is really good and disturbing: bored teenagers/jealousy/sexual tension/murder

I would vote for The Glass Key. I've read it, but it was years ago. All I remember is that it was great.

The Glass Key is one of the sources for Miller's Crossing, along with Red Harvest, and it is superb. I'd be glad to have a reason to read it again.

I've never found a way in with McBain but I keep thinking I need to try him.

In a Lonely Place is creepy as hell and nothing like the movie, except for the great late-40s atmosphere.

I've never read Megan Abbott so that sounds good too.

My Dad the preacher said that Last Summer should be required viewing for every teen, as a cautionary tale (sternly favorable mentions of Midnight Cowboy and Panic In Needle Park in other sermons).
I dimly recall liking the screen version of Evan Hunter (Ed Mcbain)'s Mister Buddwing: James Garner wakes up with no memory and goes running around black-and-white mid-60s NYC, encountering Suzanne Pleshette, who is also freaked out(and awesome).

Plot was at least in part like one of Woolrich's---blanking on the title---but it worked in contemperaneous setting.

(Leave us not forget Cornell Woolrich and Fredric Brown, btw.)

Woolrich is great, I think The Black Curtain is the one with amnesia. John Franklin Bardin's The Deadly Percheron is pretty great amnesia noir as well

dow pointed me here from a less popular ILB thread.

Basically, I'm looking for recommendations of short fiction in the mystery/detective genre. Works by non-genre writers importing elements from mystery/detective/noir/whatever into individual short pieces good too.

Have you ever read the Hard-Boiled anthology by Bill Pronzini? Spans decades of writing, tons of dope short works. Heavy hitters as well as lesser known authors

Borges?

I believe he is referring to “Death and the Compass,” which I also recommend. Tell ‘em Redd sent you.

Just a further reiteration that tana french's Faithful Place is amaaaazing

Also we should still book club!

Not a bad idea.

Also been meaning to read Tana French for a while now

I've read Faithful Place and Broken Harbour - they're both as good as any crime novel I've read that wasn't The Long Goodbye.

i posted this recently on ILB. i have no idea if it would be helpful to anyone:

read a lot of crime novels that i got from my dad this winter. PAUL DOIRON - KNIFE CREEK. pretty cool. Maine's answer to CJ BOX. 8 novels in 7 years! would read more. i dig game wardens. DON WINSLOW - THE FORCE. epic dirty cop novel. the only problem with dirty cop novels is i rarely care if the cops die or get caught. JOHN SANDFORD - DEEP FREEZE. i love that fuckin' flowers but john sandford is 73 years old and his best crime-writing days are kinda past him. not the best flowers book by a long shot. REED FARREL COLEMAN - WHAT YOU BREAK & WHERE YOU HURT. two by this guy. he certainly knows his way around Long Island - every road and town is accounted for - but it must be said: Long Island is fucking boring. WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER - SULFUR SPRINGS. would read more in this series! very entertaining. did not read the DICK WOLF novel i got from dad though. and didn't read the 4 LISA SCOTTOLINE books he gave me either. a later series of hers about a law firm. maybe if i get laid up with rubella or something i'll get to them. for now i'm back to the sci-fi.

i just finished Tana French’s In The Woods and goddamn what a book. It’s all boilerplate stuff but she tweaks all of the expected beats in really great ways. I knew the “whodunnit” halfway through and not only was I not immediately bored but kept reading because I couldn’t wait to see how French would unfold it. I can’t think of the last time that happened to me.
Def gonna read her other books

I just listened to the audiobook of Magpie Murders, a very pleasing blend of classical whodunit and overtly metatextual whodunit

i love how the narrators fall apart in the tana french books

yeah that put it over the top for me

coming to the BBC imminently

gonna be tricky to credibly pull off the central conceit of The Likeness

I mean it's barely credible on the page, much as I love the book

It’s quite literally cockamamie, you are gently invited to swallow it for the sake of what she does with it

“Literally”? What am I talking about.

oh man I just finished the likeness and I think it's my favourite one (maybe still the trespasser?). you just need to willfully ignore the giant implausibility of the premise. it takes too long for her to accept the job, but the whole second half is magic

it's kinda easier to do a doppelganger story onscreen than on the page, imo

i always go slow with the first halves of the tana french books and then read the last 200 pages in a massive sleep-cycle-ruining gut-punching rush

Yes totally! Was up till 4 reading it one night.

i borrowed into the woods from the library with some other books 3 weeks ago, but it sat on my pile til the day before & after tentatively going “well i’ll just see what it’s like” i read the whole thing in a day lol

*til the day before it was due back

now i gotta get my hands on the likeness >:(

scored a copy of the Likeness :D
symsymsym otm: ye gods the premise is rough as guts but I trust she’ll give me my money’s worth so i’m all in

also idk if i have repped for him itt or not but anyone looking for solid modern crime shd check out George Pelecanos

(Him & Richard Price worked on The Wire together)

Price is my favorite of the two but Pelecanos is so subtle and understated that it’s unfair to compare them. Pelecanos books are reliably great and seemingly effortless. It’s almost like he hasn’t crafted the story so much as he just *knows* it and is telling it to you. It’s very oldschool imo.

have a sneaking suspicion Pelecanos likes to drive around in a big car listening to music from the 1970s

just a feeling, idk

I want to like Pelecanos but as someone who spends a significant amount of time writing about music for money, the music sections of his books drive me into a frothing rage. I want to slice them out the way Thomas Jefferson sliced up the Bible.

lol sic

yeah veg the premise totally pays off. in the woods is special for how terrible the narrator's decisions are, but all her books have great moments where you want to grab the narrator and forcibly prevent them from making bad choices

yeah totally

If you all missed it in the obit thread, Philip Kerr passed away. Right before the U.S. release of his next Bernie Gunther novel.

Does anybody have any Ngaio Marsh recommendations (or ones to avoid)?

I'm reading one of hers at the moment, and have read about 10 or so of them in total. They're uniformly excellent IMO (just one has been a bit less good than the others, I will try to remember its title, its more of a thriller than a classic whodunnit), I'd say she and Dorothy L Sayers might be my favourite of the "big 4" golden age authors. Try to start near the beginning of the run of Alleyn novels as there is a certain amount of story arc, thought it doesn't really matter if you jump around. The three-novel HarperCollins omnibus editions are nice enough and you get plenty of bang for your buck.

Thanks Neil, I have one of those omnibus volumes (volume 6, in fact) which I picked up because one of the novels contained in it (Spinsters in Jeopardy, which make a great title for a Golden Age Crime Fiction blog) promises black magic covens, drug rings, kinky sex. Didn't know there was any kind of continuity between the books - I'm a bit geeky about that kind of thing, so will probably wait until I acquire the first volume, I think.

The only thing that puts me off is your comparison to Dorothy L Sayers. I started on The Nine Tailors last year, but actually gave up about halfway through out of sheer boredom - something I rarely do with books once I've started them. On the other hand, I can still read old Christies with great pleasure so I'm hoping I get on with Marsh in the same way.

Spinsters in Jeopardy was actually the one I was trying to remember! There's a fair amount of nonsense about the ~evil of drugs~ in that one which is all very silly, and there's not really a mystery as such. A better bet after the earlier pure murder mysteries, I would say.

The Nine Tailors is great, I think, but I can certainly see why it might have been off-putting as the first Sayers you read. Part of the fun with that one is the atmosphere. If you're inclined to try again I might recommend The Five Red Herrings, which is also very atmospheric and has a really juicy mystery at its heart.

As with Marsh, the Sayers novels are probably better read in sequence as there is an arc there. One of the appeals of Christie which also makes them easy to read is that there is literally no character development novel to novel- Poirot is always Poirot, and Miss Marple is always Miss Marple. Marsh and Sayers (and to a slightly lesser extent Allingham) do develop their main figures over time, even if they essentially stay the same.

Neil S OTM ... Sayers' series works much better read in order, since the evolution of character and tone is drastic. The contrast between Whose Body? and Gaudy Night is so extreme that fans of one might well dislike the other (I like the whole series, though the later books tend to be slow).

Marsh is much more consistent ... Neil S again OTM about the arc of the early books setting up the later ones. She did a good job sustaining the quality of her series over a long run, but the last few books are less energetic.

I have to give some love to Margery Allingham too. Her gentleman-detective, like Marsh's, is in the Wimsey mold, but she tends to veer away from standard whodunit plots. Traitor's Purse is a violent espionage/adventure novel that seems to anticipate Ian Fleming. The Tiger in the Smoke is sort of a hardboiled procedural suspense novel with a psychopathic villain in the foreground. Allingham doesn't really fit in with the other three Queens of the Golden Age, and her weakest books are pretty weak, but she's usually entertaining.

NB I just enjoyed Edgar Wallace's Four Just Men (1905), so my tolerance for dusty old crime fiction may be abnormally high.

To recommend something more recent: Jean-Claude Izzo's Marseilles trilogy (Total Chaos, Chourmo, and Solea) is a wild ride, if you can handle his hyper-emotional alcoholic gourmand protagonist and journalistic social criticism. Very dark and gritty, these books are much more violent than their body count might suggest, and together they give a powerful portrait of Izzo's city.

I get stuck on Sayers's dialogue - there's just too much of it, like she's writing a radio play.

xp I like Allingham too, I think Campion is a good character, though some of her prose is very over-written and her less good books are actively bad- The Mind Readers has not aged well at all.

More very useful posts, thanks all - I'm well-versed in American crime fic but a novice when it comes to Golden Age Brit tec. Adding Allingham to the list - and must read some Josephine Tey, too.

As it happens I read one of hers recently too, perfectly serviceable IIRC. I would also recommend the Gervase Fen books by Edmund Crispin, and "Death At The President's Lodging" by Michael Innes, all of which are set in lightly fictionalised versions of Oxford.

The Man in the Queue was the Tey I read, definitely more of a 39 Steps-style caper than a pure mystery, and Inspector Grant is a bit of a cipher, but it barrels along easily enough

Just started the new Wallace Stroby, SOME DIE NAMELESS, which is excellent so far. Not part of any series.

Tried In The Woods by Tana French, based on ILX recommendations here, but thought it was pretty bad tbh. Far too much adjectival 'fine writing', far too many cardboard characters (gloomy cop with secret past, tough no-nonsense female partner who somehow has the ability to spot psychopaths) and a central mystery that's just not very compelling - the kind of thing Colin Dexter would polish off in about a third of the length. Worst of all - SPOILERS - French sets up a mystery around her central character that's not resolved by the end of the book, which felt like a total cop-out.

I've struggled with that book too but I think it's fine. She gets *much* better by book 3 & 4.

I posted this on What You Are Reading:
Oh speaking of xpost Josephine Tey, Daugther of Time is the one people always rec. to me for starters, but also today in the WSJ read a microrave for Miss Pym Disposes, set in a girls school, the title character getting pulled into a complicated garden, esp. re the studious, decorous Miss Innes, with her "Borgia-like face": "Tey's dignified passion for Innes is a strange flame that lights this strangely magical novel," strange strange yeah I'll probably check it out (reviewer is Laura Thompson, whose Agatha Christie bio got some good reviews; despite familiar themes, even got Washington Post reviewer comparing Christie to Ferrante??). Also intrigued by her take on Margery Allingham's The Fashion In Shrouds, which apparently is more deep female chess; my simple male mind will just have to go it (Conclusion: "The book is an elliptical fantasy, yet it has the gift of making one care.")
She also picked one each by Sayers, Christie, somebody else: all of 'em for that Five Best guest authors' column in weekend WSJ. I would have just pasted or linked the whole thing, but it was behind the paywall; I saw the paper at the library.
Library has a ton of Michael Connelly, Jonathan Kellerman, Karin Slaugher---should I check any of theirs?

"my simple male mind will just have to go with it," I meant.

There's some good discussion of Connelly upthread.

I'd suggest the first in the Bosch series, The Black Echo; if you like that one, the next few get better. His early novels are a little wilder but soon the series settles into the quasi-journalistic procedural mode he's known for. The style and texture of the books are so consistent that none of them tends to stand out as really memorable, but his quality control is high and he's almost never disappointing.

Thanks, will def try to find The Black Echo and other early, wilder ones; I always like to do that.

new Tana French book next month! (her first standalone)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/556486/the-witch-elm-by-tana-french/9780735224629

yay!!

after seeing that belinda bauer was nominated for the man booker for "snap" and thinking "huh a crime fiction author being nominated for a man booker prize, weird," i started reading her books and they are generally great. she could be compared to tana french, but i think the closest comparison would be ruth rendell/barbara vine - her best books aren't really "mysteries" but more about setting up characters around a crime and having you wait to see what happens when they intersect. i thought "snap" was actually one of her weaker books (it's fine but a little goofier than the others) and "the beautiful dead" is the one that comes closest to being bad (too many ridiculous crime fiction tropes). i really enjoyed "the facts of life and death," "the shut eye," and "rubbernecker" in particular.

I recently read BURY ME DEEP by Megan Abbott, which is in a similar vein to Queenpin in its setting but goes to much darker territory. Based on a true story, which I won’t reveal here, but it deviates from that story in key ways.

I think I’ll have to read everything she’s written...and would love to see the Coens tackle one of these two books.

This is extremely what I'm into right now.

Especially David Goodis - Black Friday was great and Shoot the Piano Player is astounding so far. He's great at holding back information and then delivering it without screaming TWIST and he seems more interested in conveying their inner feelings than a lot of authors in the genre.

Anyone watching the BBC/RTE Tana French adap?

They've made the quite frankly bizarre decision to combine the first two Dublin Murder Squad novels into one story, which makes an already baroque and confusing narrative completely incomprehensible

God help anyone who hasn't read the books

oh dear

whaaaat

also i hadnt heard of this til now

Oh wow i have actually read both. They're completely disparate stories!

What the fuuuck

So like they're making it that Rob and Cassie are trying to solve the case in the second book?

Bleh

I had no idea these were enjoyed here.

I read the first three in the series (were there ever more?)

there are six! but the rest are all more disparate then the first two. is the bbc show any good otherwise? that premise sounds fatal

Having Robb in The Likeness's story kind of robs it of its tension, I would think.

i've binged a loooooooooot of laura lippman books over the past few months. her stand-alone books tend to be better than the tess monaghan series, though the series has its high points as well. they get pretty repetitive if you read them all in a row but that was what i needed in the early days of quarantine.

i'm on my third alex marwood book in a row now - they're kind of rendell-y in that they aren't exactly mysteries, they bounce between character perspectives, etc. "the poison garden" petered out at the end a little but was otherwise entertaining, takes place in the aftermath of a jonestown-esque mass cult suicide. "the darkest secret" was more straightforward crime fiction but also had a more satisfying conclusion.

oh i enjoyed the dublin murders adaptation fine, though "the likeness" plotline was kind of tossed in there in the middle of the run and not as strong as the other plotline.

I love Lippman’s standalone novels, she’s a really good crime writer

I’m reading Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland, it’s an enjoyable, by the numbers heist story set in the rural southern US

Reminds me a little: had some relatives who went from rural southern US to farm in Cali, out around Modesto and Turlock, and I've long had a recurring curiosity about rural, blue collar, Inland etc., also the cowboy movie subculture in Hollywood: intriguing glimpses of that=my fave parts of Day of the Locusts, also layers of it in unfinished novel incl. in Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover Lewis Reader (Lewis, whose New Journo cred helped establish that of early Rolling Stone, is still of consid. Texastential interest, background-fueled and outward bound---also in here, he revisits his hometown village across the river from Dallas, mentioning that it's also that of Horace McCoy, citing one McC. novel involving said funky noir-SW Gothic locale, No Pockets in A Shroud, also is frustrated by having witnessed the rapid decline of another homeboy, the notorious Billy Lee Brammer, after publication of his amazing The Gay Place)
Otherwise, I've read an asskicking novella by Leigh Brackett, who also wrote for Howard Hawkes and Robert Altman---blanking on the title of this one, but Inland boondocks imagery, vibe, momentum so intense and sufficiently nuanced that it reminded me in effect of her science fiction, which I know better (also incl. some asskicking).
Something I read by Ross MacDonald had some of this, w v. dysfunctional family implosions, and was he an influence/source of lifted elements for The Rockford Files (ex-con ex-cop now a low-budget PI, living in a trailer w his Pappy)?
Anyway, what should I read with this kind of setting? Could be urban, like old blue collar Frisco, L.A., incl. cowboy Hwood, as well as San Pedro, Tulare, Modesto, Turlock, Mojave, salt flats, wine country, whatevs (Have read some Steinbeck, thinking again I should check Fante, after recently seeing his co-scripted My Man and I on tcm).

Read Blacktop Wasteland a couple of months back. Very good stuff.

Stoked by Luc Sante's commentary on Richard Stark's Parker series (incl. in latest LS, Maybe The People Would Be The Times), I then read Dirty Money (2008, year of Stark/Westlake's death), the only one still in my local library (or so I thought), maybe six weeks ago. The part that keeps returning is the abject desperate violence of the two mugs finally trying to beat Parker's colleague into switching sides (even if they seemed to succeed, he'd slit their throats the second they glanced sideways, and that's if Parker hadn't already entered the room, as he is about to). Something about this is credible, even relatable, as the kids say, in a way I haven't wanted to examine.

Also struck by the usually canny, fatefully named Mrs Bartlett, so embarrassed by belatedly recognizing what she'd missed that she can't now bring herself to go to the cops---I'm wondering how often this happens, compared to fear of reprisals. Making her mistake known to these canny professionals, mostly men, is a kind of reprisal.

The female bounty hunter also canny, the Stepford Girlfriend yeesh.

I was finally getting annoyed by how much mayhem Parker was the blank eye of, also (sez britannica.com) the Catalyst, in chemistry, any substance that increases the rate of a reaction without itself being consumed. Or at all affected, other than getting a little winded sometimes. Not that I want him to be some quirky colorful asshole crook. I don't know what I want.

But now I see that the library also has Talk To The Parrot 2006, the penultimate story) in Large Print section, will read that too, later. (Now reading very much about home repair, renovation, ugh)

Should have read The Hunter while they still had it: basis of Point Blank, one of the best crime movies I've ever seen.

Wiki sez:

In Luc Sante's essay The Gentrification of Crime, which appeared in the March 28, 1985 issue of The New York Review of Books, he offered the following analysis of the character:

In Parker's world there is no good or evil, but simply different styles of crime. There is no law, so Parker cannot be caught, but merely injured or delayed. The subversive implication is not that crime pays, but that all business is crime. Among the Homeric epithets that follow Parker from book to book is: 'He had to be a businessman of some kind. The way he looked, big and square and hard, it had to be a tough and competitive business; used cars maybe, or jukeboxes.' He is a loner, competing with conglomerates (the syndicate) and fending off marginal elements (psychotics, amateurs). He has no interest in society except as a given, like the weather, and none in power. He is a freebooter who acquires money in order to buy himself periods of vegetative quiet.[7]

Contrary to what Sante says, Parker was arrested and imprisoned twice in the series—first in The Hunter for vagrancy, then much later, in Breakout after a heist goes wrong. In both cases, his real identity wasn't known to the authorities at the time of arrest, and he escaped both times from facilities with relatively low security. However, Parker's always very aware that the law is out there, and that his fingerprints are linked to the murder of a guard at a prison camp—which means that he has no chance of ever being released if caught and properly identified.
So he's more motivated than I got from reading Dirty Money, during which I started hoping he'd get caught, but then thinking what's the diff, he'd do fine in stir.
Lots here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_(Stark_novels_character)

Also not crazy about the amount of boilerplate, in the sense of now we watch how a ship loads shit, step by step etc., and transactional conversations that could be better summarized. I mean all this zips by with the rest, but as long as you've got the rep of being lean 'n' mean, do it more, Stark.

To be fair, Sante wrote that decades before Stark wrote Breakout. I'd say Parker is aware of the police as a danger, but they're only a danger if someone acts in an irrational way; if people would just act as bloodlessly and logically as he would, the law would not be a factor.

I just read Nobody Runs Forever and Ask the Parrot, sort of reluctant to read the last novel. Nobody Runs Forever does a nice job of setting up a scenario that constantly seems like a bad idea, but is just feasible enough that Parker doesn't give up on it, even though he's running around playing Whack-a-mole with the various complicating factors.

Also recently re-read The Outfit, which is much leaner and a bit more fun. I loved the scene in which an advisor is explaining to the mob boss that none of his illegal businesses act like criminal enterprises anymore, none of his employees think they're crooks, and therefore it's extremely easy to rob them.

I read the first Dortmunder book, Hot Rock, wasn't that impressed. I gather the Parker books are a whole different thing?

This year's Edgar nominees: https://mysterywriters.org/mwa-announces-2021-edgar-allan-poe-award-nominations/

Recommendations (or warnings-off) welcome; I don't know much about the contemporary stuff.

xp I haven't read any of the Dortmunder books but I get the impression they're kind of comedic shaggy-dog stories? The Parker novels are very methodical (Parker hears about a score, gets guys together, makes a plan, human desires get in the way, plan goes awry, Parker acts as brutally as necessary to get his money and not leave loose ends) and have opening lines like “When the guy with the asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away.”

ha, yeah, sounds different

it's not a nominee (maybe bc it's more crime/thriller than mystery) but i recommend Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby.

xp btw there is a thread for him Donald Westlake (and Richard Stark, etc.) RIP

The opening sentences of the Parker novels are fantastic. These are my favorites:

The Outfit: “When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled off the bed.”
The Handle: “When the engine stopped, Parker came up on deck for a look around.”
The Seventh: “When he didn’t get any answer the second time he knocked, Parker kicked the door in.”
The Black Ice Score: “Parker walked into his hotel room, and there was a guy in there going through his suitcase laid out on his bed.”
The Sour Lemon Score: “Parker put the revolver away and looked out the windshield.”
Slayground: “Parker jumped out of the Ford with a gun in one hand and the packet of explosive in the other.”
Plunder Squad: “Hearing the click behind him, Parker threw his glass straight back over his right shoulder, and dove off his chair to the left.”
Butcher’s Moon: “Running toward the light, Parker fired twice over his left shoulder, not caring whether he hit anything or not.”
Backflash: “When the car stopped rolling, Parker kicked out the rest of the windshield and crawled through onto the wrinkled hood, Glock first.”
Firebreak: “When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.”

Awesome, thanks!
Right about Sante's "error" being because the series hadn't gotten Parker's ass to prison yet; sorry, I wasn't clear on the chronology. But his 80s take otherwise fits w Dirty Money, which doesn't *seem* like an xpost last novel, btw, could as easily been titled Run Forever as any of 'em, apparently.
Right also about the diff between him and Dortmunder.
I also want to read the posthumously published Memory, a "Kafkaesque neo-noir," reliable sources have just informed me. An early work, and what road would he have taken if it came when written---?
Another turn: I saw online that submitted version of The Hunter had him captured or killed, but editor said he would accept it only w change, so could be basis of series---so somebody else saw the creative-commercial potential of such a (seemingly) one-man proto-Blank Generation as flourishing antihero, quite a diff idea (for a series, anyway) in early 60s, I take it. I wish I'd read The Hunter when library had it, since it is of course the basis of Point Blank (also wish I could go back to my olde Campus Film Society and put that on double bill with Get Carter)(will have to check for extant origins of the latter, think based on fiction of an otherwise fairly erratic Brit)

(one more gripe about DM: Also not crazy about the amount of boilerplate, in the sense of now we watch how a ship loads shit, step by step etc., and transactional conversations that could be better summarized. I mean all this zips by with the rest, and there isn't *that* much of it, but as long as you've got the rep of being lean 'n' mean, do it more, Stark.)(But for all I know, he finished it on his deathbed.)

Haven't read any of the Parker novels, which would be a good one to start with?

You should probably start at the beginning with The Hunter, though Flashfire is a good late-period installment in the series (skip the Jason Statham movie Parker, from which it's loosely adapted; Jennifer Lopez is OK in it but the movie as a whole is pretty crap).

Weird thing I just noticed: the titles of the first five "Parker returns" novels all connect to each other - Comeback, Backflash, Flashfire, Firebreak, Breakout.

^ gonna start these after I finish Mosley’s Rawlins books
Thank you ilx!

All of the Parker novels, both the original run and the resurrection, are masterpieces of American crime fiction and my #1 crime series of all time. I also like Westlake in general, including the Dortmunders, though they are MUCH lighter.

Fave Parkers - The Rare Coin Score, Breakout, The Score, The Jugger (this one reads a bit differently than the rest. More of a Jim Thompson diseased small town vibe.)

Fave other Westlakes - The Ax (#1 forever), Lemons Never Lie, The Fugitive Pigeon, Jimmy The Kid.

Fun fact: Westlake, in collaboration w another favorite writer, Lawrence Block, wrote a number of sleaze/softcore paperbacks before his crime fiction career took off.

dow: "Memory" is good, reads less like a typical Westlake crime novel and more like a deeply thematic stab at "serious literate" (don't mean that disparagingly; it just deals with themes usually reserved for the highbrow.)

I like the books Westlake wrote as Tucker Coe; i did not like the ones he wrote a Sam Holt.

Slayground works well as a standalone, iirc, though it's also rather different from the typical Parker novel - more of an action/survival thriller than a heist plot. Parker being hunted by goons in a closed amusement park. It's super fun.

From what I recall, I think the sequencing becomes a bit less important later in the series. The first 8 or so are definitely best read in sequence.

Fave other Westlakes - The Ax (#1 forever), Lemons Never Lie, The Fugitive Pigeon, Jimmy The Kid.

The Ax is so good. Reads almost like a Stephen King-as-Richard Bachman book (short description: unemployed corporate dude, knowing there are only a few other candidates for a job he wants, decides to murder the competition).

I think the sequencing becomes a bit less important later in the series.
I had no prob w Dirty Money, which briefly referred to events of Ask The Parrot, and apparently picked right up, bump across the railroad tracks and you're back.

Also just enough ref to relevant bits from earlier books.

Thanks for the tips! Have downloaded The Hunter for my next Kindle read.

fun fact: the young tracer hand smoked w33d in donald westlake's greenwich village 1-br apartment in the late 90s. speaking of softcore pulp he had an entire spinny rack of vintage playboys upstairs (of course he did) (and now that i think of it, they might have actually each contained a story by him)

somebody on this board has a really chastening story about a time donald westlake was a total dick to them but i can't remember who

It was a young Scott Seward irc

yes i'm pretty sure you're right

Cool Trace...how did you know him?

to be clear i did not know him and did not meet him! i just hung out in his apartment a few times. a college friend of mine’s parents knew him somehow from long island where i guess he used to spend some time? and allowed my friend to stay there the summer after college (westlake was never there). nice digs if you can get em!!?

Cool

it was an ideal crashpad for two broke 21-year-olds in the big city. bleecker and 13th-ish.

a block or two from the white horse

I always wonder a bit if Donald Westlake participated in/was a fan of/knew people associated w/ the folk revival scene of the early sixties in the village. Proximity would certainly make it possible. After all, Westlake named the protagonist of the fugitive pigeon Charlie Poole! And his buddy Lawrence Block was drinking partners with Dave Van Ronk.

also one of the tucker coe novels involves a murder above a folk/beatnik cafe.

xp Block wrote the memoir-intro to Van Ronk's memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street ---which is maybe a memoir-bio, finished after his death by Elijah Wald; I haven't read it yet. Read enough liner notes etc. by DVR to think he'd be good in or with a crime novel, with quite the steady eye.

I was really, really impressed by Block's When The Sacred Ginmill Closes when I read it last year, the way it represents time naturally passing by, rather than the usual thriller plot momentum (although there's a lot of that too). Looking forward to read more in that series!

That's one of my favorites, Chuck. If you're new to the series, I'd go back and just start at the beginning. A lot of things could potentially be spoiled by reading later books. And, frankly, the first half-dozen have, for me, been the ones that get re-read over and over. Every once in a while I'll re-read the later ones, but there are changes in the series that, while not objectively bad or uninteresting, do slow down the pacing a bit.

His series of Hitman short stories & novels are some of the best semi-recent crime fiction I've read imo. I def don't love all of his stuff -- a lot of the early material, while again, not BAD at all, sort of pales in comparison to the later stuff and series characters he wrote.

dow - I read and enjoyed Mayor of Macdougal Street a few years ago. Fast and easy read, worth reading about if you're a fan of Van Ronk's or just generally interested in the milieu. In terms of music, like Van Ronk well enough but I honestly haven't spent a lot of time listening to his records; or, these days, not much of that village folk stuff, except maybe Richard & Mimi Farina.

Just finished John D. MacDonald's The Empty Copper Sea, late in the series: McGee still does his thing---a "salvage expert," this time commissioned to salvage the good name of a boat pilot, Mickey Finned by his previously good boss, who has evidently screwed over many associates to fake his own overboard death, and escape with a ton o' mon owed to many, but justified by big ins. pay-off to wife 'n' kids, but ins co among the many not buying it; McGee & Meyer get involved in that too (the boar pilot was a locally notorious hell-raiser before he got religion and went straight-edge; now he's been set-up to have seemed dead drunk when boss went over the rails, so he's either foole or knave, if in on the probable scam, back to his old sketchy self either way)
Pretty fast for so much inner life on display and under discussion, and it goes w the hardy and decrepit layers of Florida---McGee gets pretty broody about all that he sees and feels, incl. being an aging "beach bum" for hire, the money in part an excuse to keep doing anything that suits his nomadic ways, more of a restless leash life than lush life at this point, but still a long enough leash for some excitement.
Some of the excitement comes out of his behavior, reacting to local mugs etc, and some of that advances the plot, some his first-person experience, shared with Meyer and the reader, as life gets lived between more important plot points: filler, you could say, but pretty killer, and statisfying enough, incl. carefully demonstrating how he and Meyer carefully do their best to solve or amend a prob that goes way back to McGee as creator.
A couple of unlikely elements in and just past otherwise tasty final battle (in the last chapter, but the epilogue kept it from wrapping up quite so neatly).
What else should I read by McD? That was my first.

(Did read one other thing; blanking on the title, but was a good anthoologized science fiction story, with diplomatic-philosophical discussion under the stars, followed by another battle.)

Any recs for crime fiction with queer themes? Past twenty years especially, not in the mood for something dated.

The only one I ever read was in Joseph Hansen's Dave Brandstetter series, can't remember the title, but might have been the first one, Fadeout, v. groundbreaking when published in 1970. Don't know how dated it might seem now, but There were 12 of them, and Hansen lived 'til 2004, and he seemed interested in having his detective live in real time, according to this intro for Fadeout, kicking off republishing the whole series (I think). Appealing introduction, anyway: https://crimereads.com/joseph-hanson-dave-brandstetter/

xxxp

it goes w the hardy and decrepit layers of Florida---McGee gets pretty broody about all that he sees and feels, incl. being an aging "beach bum" for hire...Some of the excitement comes out of his behavior

i've been digging back into the Wallander series, and i've read my share of scando crime fic but Mankell really was a superior storyteller. the crimes do get a little bit too baroque for my tastes a lot, the novels invariably start with the interior monologue of the unknown killer preparing for his or her crimes. but Wallander is a pretty fine character to anchor a series. all the cliches are present (ones which Mankell probably largely popularized), but they're more subtly drawn, and the best aspect is the time devoted to the detective work among the police force. every novel has Wallander feeling something is wrong and obsessing over what he missed at first glance, and it forces us to think about the story a bit from his POV, though we know more than he.

also started reading Carl Hiaasen, specifically the two novels Bad Monkey and Razor Girl, which are two novels featuring a former detective-turned-health inspector, and they're pretty damn good. really outlandish characters, but the lead dude is a very likable sort despite his errors in judgment. they're turning the first novel into a limited(?) series starring Vince Vaughn, which seems like terrible casting vis-à-vis the character's inherent likability.

have a few other crime books out from the library, next up on the list is Westlake's 'what's the worst that could happen?' which looks like a fun read.

I have read two of Fred Vargas' Adamsberg novels this year (the second and third, for whatever reason) and those are really pleasant. Very French, affectionately-drawn secondary characters (a shepherd named Watchy, a fishing captain turned latter-day town crier), cockamamie crimes (murderous wolf-man? the plague?). Recommend.

Recently read Jordan Harper's A Lesson In Violence and The Last King Of California, which are both set in white trash desert California (where my dad grew up, coincidentally) and populated by Nazi bikers, meth-heads, cartel soldiers, etc., etc. Very violent, super hard-boiled but surprisingly literary at times. He's got a third book coming out next year.

Just started Chris Offutt’s “The Killing Hills” - enjoying it so far. Kind of a languid noir but also genuinely funny, mixed with a little Reacher (i say that only bc the protagonist is a vet)

If this one plays out well i’ll definitely be digging into his others, I already love the way he writes

Eight Million Ways to Die, another terrific Lawrence Block. And A Season in Exile, another terrific Oliver Harris “Belsey” novel. Both are expert at getting the right formula-to-surprises ratio.

Has anyone read any Arturo Perez Reverte? The book summaries always seem interesting, and then the insides seem a bit long and drab.

The Fencing Master or whatever is fabulous. Really controlled tone and mood. Cheesy sometimes but in a good way imo.

I've been re-reading the Gene Kerrigan novels about cops n' criminals in Ireland -- finished The Midnight Choir over the weekend and started Dark Times In The City last night. Seems he hasn't published a novel in quite a while, which is rather a shame. The central thesis of his work seems to be just that everything is bloody rotten - the police, the white color criminals, the lives of the poor/hopeless/addicted.

Nice. Believe I gave you the first one in that book drop several years back.

Thats very possible!!!

I’m pretty sure of it. Think Savage Art might have been in there as well. I’m also reminded there could have been some Ken Bruen in there and definitely some of his pal Jason Starr. I used to be really into them but I believe you pointed out that Jason Starr was too dark or something and then I saw him do a reading at The Mysterious Bookshop where he was laughing the whole time and I decided you were correct and never looked back.

The Jack Taylor novels can each be read in about two hours, sort of a weird series how they went from fairly straightforward albeit bleaker than usual PI (maybe more akin to something like a walk among the tombstones) and veered into meta self-aware surreal avenging angel horror type stuff. After awhile it was hard to grab onto anything in those novels other than the style and the to some extent admirable mercilessness. Quite the ending of that final book though.

Re: Bruen obv

His style sometimes seems like a stab at Ellroy, when Ellroy is at his most cut-up and jagged. Has little room for Ellroy’s right wing tendencies tho, Bruen is clearly a leftist.

authors whose work I see everywhere so much it’s like white noise at this point: Karin Slaughter. Any good? Robert crais ? Jeffrey deaver?

Think the last Jack Taylor book I read was the one where the baby fell out the window. Or maybe it was the one after that. I was figuring he just kept writing them Ann Tyler-style all these years but I guess I was misinformed.

Think in the end there were 15 Jack Taylor novels. Galway is basically as violent as Ciudad Juarez according to those tales.

Maybe I should reread The Guards and see how I feel about it.

I’ve read a couple of Robert Crais, highly recommend - “Monkeys Raincoat”is great imo .. dunno about his later stuff but the early few novels are v good iirc

he used to be a tv writer, worked on hillstreet blues. “monkeys raincoat”
maybe kinda lives in a shane black sorta universe (in a good way)

I think Bruen’s novels about corrupt London cops see better than the Taylors. Beware that the earliest collection of The White Trilogy is atrociously edited.

authors whose work I see everywhere so much it’s like white noise at this point: Karin Slaughter. Any good? Robert crais ? Jeffrey deaver?

New Megan Abbott novel is out; I love her.

I've only read her period novels, which are ridiculously great.

Been reading Adrian McKinty's Irish troubles/cop thriller novel The Cold, Cold Ground. Really good, though it has as its hero a guy who's a little too "cool guy" with his high fidelity music taste and other signifiers. It's a minor beef tho, the atmosphere is great. Belfast and Carrickfergus and its environs come off as positively hellish.

took me forever but i finally read a Ross Macdonald book - started at the beginning w/The Moving Target. Thought it was pretty great, though perhaps a cut below the Chandlers and Hammetts I've read. i love what he took from Chandler, my favorite maybe being giving other names to real places. Santa Barbara becomes Santa Teresa, Ventura becomes Buenavista, etc. it's a little odd that they did that, but i like it. it's an alternate universe southern california. this particular novel is kinda grim in the end, and ahead of its time in a lot of ways, with respect to the sexuality and there's even a hippie con artist guru crook who feels like a character from a 1960s novel, not a 1949 one. i think this novel resonated a bit more since i just spent several days in Santa Barbara (which is where i bought it!) and the wealth and lazy corruption of the story really fits that milieu.

ian, when scanning the thread for other Rossy Mac mentions i saw your posts mentioning Arthur Lyons, gonna check him out next.

Read S.A. Cosby's latest. It's a little too hyperreal for my taste in some ways — the killer is a supervillain demon, basically — but in other ways it's incredible. Nobody's inhabiting the rural south like him right now.

Lehane’s Small Mercies is excellent - the protagonist is bordering on ridiculous but she’s also kind of a Parker figure so not too ridiculous for a crime novel.

I'm re-reading Derek Raymond -- "He Died With His Eyes Open" specifically. And it got me thinking about cops and police procedurals and why, in the age of blatant and egregious police misconduct, anyone can still write about the police as a benevolent force.

Raymond's hero is a Good Cop in a bad system - he cares about justice (define how you like) while surrounded by callous careerists and worse. I don't know if the Factory novels were the first novels to make such a point of the uselessness of policing but by comparison they make Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels look naive. And I like some of those early McBains a lot, but as I have gotten more aware of the reality of policing I find it hard to take.

So I think fuck the police novel. Michael Connelly, John Sandford, this is mostly copaganda, as far as I can tell.

I do love Ken Bruen's novels about the south london police squad -- but they're not Good Cops in any sense; they're not meant to be heroic. They're self-serving, callous, generally corrupt. I've not read all of Ellroy, but his cops are often the same way. SORT of similar, but more of a stretch, my beloved Bastardi di Pizzofalcone - the misfit cops of Naples, they are largely Good Cops (but not all for sure!), but the system around them is more of a self-serving machine than any type of tool seeking justice.

just my thoughts thank you.

The problem I have with the Bosch novels and also the series (I find them pretty solid but far from great), is they're definitely trying to "say something" about the morally complex web of police and crime type shit while also trying to be basically like Hunter starring Fred Dryer.

The excellent thing about such stories told from the perspective of private investigators or criminals is they so frequently and correctly characterize the police as corrupt or incompetent or uncaring. The best ones don't even do it in an over-the-top way, they just depict the system as what it is.

I enjoyed the first couple seasons of the TV series but have really fallen off a lot of TV watching.
I only read two of the novels, but was so bothered by the dialogue that I couldn't continue. His characters rarely seem to speak with contractions and I found it, i dunno, distracting? I'm sure a lot of modern police novels deal with the complexities and nuances of things, but I feel like anything coming from a default perspective of "the police are generally trying to do good" is... incorrect and borderline morally reprehensible.

xp. Indeed! A lot of my favorite PI novels will talk about policing, but it's not idealized.

I'm kind of curious about that novel The Force, by Don Winslow. I don't know what its take on cops is. I definitely love a truly hard-hitting ACAB crime novel. The Red Riding trilogy by David Peace has elements of that, but that one's more just tied up with a massive conspiracy and it's not particularly realistic.

It's funny.. I made an instagram post on this subject and mentioned Peace's hero cop as an exception - again falling into the category of someone surrounded by incompetence and corruption. In fact, I forget the fellas name, he's basically driven insane by the work. I really liked those books - the films too. Time for a re-read of those soon maybe.

I have a copy of the force, I think, that I picked up cuz I really like his drug war novels, but I've always put it off basically for the reasons articulated above. I'm sure there's nuance to it - he's a good writer - but do I want to spend my time thinking about cops? I dunno.

Tangent:

A friend of mine who is well read but sort of uhhh.. highbrow, just moved out of town, and I gave her a stack of my doubles as a going away gift - it does surprise me still that in the year of our lord 2023 there are people unable to acknowledge the social importance of the crime novel.

All favorites of mine,
Black Friday by Goodis
Burnt Orange Heresy by Willeford
Queenpin by Abbott
Ride The Pink Horse by Hughes
The Last Good Kiss by Crumley.

i haven’t read any of those. will add to ky reading list!

They lean toward the sad and violent so I hope that's cool w/ you.

I’ve read the Force, can’t say I remember it much

The Last Good Kiss is really a novel in the style of the film Night Moves imo. With slightly more of a western vibe. Beautifully bleak stuff.

Queenpin is amazing.

I don't remember much about The Force either; Winslow's novels are designed to slide right through your brain, I think. There was definitely some One Good Cop Surrounded By Corrupt Stormtroopers shit going on, though.

In Colson Whitehead's two recent crime novels, the only cops that show up at all are corrupt (and racist) goons. They're literally the villains, even though the protagonist is a fence.

https://i.imgur.com/imr4Mq7.jpg

My Crumleys

the social importance of the crime novel.

Maigret remains uniquely satisfying, in my limited cop-crime experience.

Also enjoyed The Rat King, the only Aurelio Zen I've read. For embarrassing the wrong people in a previous case, he's banished to working a bloody feud among prosperous farmers in the (Italian) highlands. Very edutaining and eventually omg even more bloody.

Price’s next book, The Whites, is also excellent, although a little pulpier. Samaritan is also great and similarly immersive. Stupidly I haven’t read Clockers or Freedomland yet - they always look intimidatingly long

Price’s next book, The Whites, is also excellent, although a little pulpier. Samaritan is also great and similarly immersive. Stupidly I haven’t read Clockers or Freedomland yet - they always look intimidatingly long

Putting in a vote for dead pulp writer Gil Brewer, whose best stuff is wonderful.

Would love a recommendation list for Brewer. I liked "The Vengeful Virgin" and "39 French Street" but haven't dug any deeper. I sort of lump him in with Day Keene, for some reason, as someone I think I like but whose body of work is still largely unread.

Jean-Patrick Manchette's novels from the 1960s and 1970s are amazing; several of them are available in translation from NYRB Classics. Nada, about a gang of losers who try their hand at terrorism, is particularly good.

Love Manchette. Nada and Fatale are particular faves.

I often read one of his novels and think about how great a film adaptation would be in the hands of the right filmmaker, and then I think about what they did to the prone gunman a few years back and realize depressingly that Hollywood probably isn't capable of that anymore.

Love the Machete/Tardi graphic novels too:

https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/streets-of-paris-streets-of-murder-the-complete-graphic-noir-of-manchette-tardi-vol-1

^^^ gotta get those at some point, just never see em around.

Oh yeah I may have an ebook version of The Prone Gunman, sorry La position du tireur couché.

Re Brewer, THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN, THE RED SCARF and A TASTE FOR SIN should get you hooked.

https://time.com/collection/best-mystery-thriller-books/

I've only read about 15 of these. Granted some will def not be to my tastes, and some of the ones i have read I do not rate that highly (Jo Nesbo!) but, interested in the takes of fellow ILX crime fiction enthusiasts.

i've only read 12. there are a few gaps i've gotta fill in obv. i read one Nesbo novel, the first Harry Hole book, and wasn't feeling it. my favorite from this list...it's hard to choose.

it seems like the list shifts away from more pure, heart of the genre mystery fiction and into modern fiction with mystery elements or airport fiction mystery (and...The Hunt for Red October??), just a bit. not necessarily a criticism, but from what i have read out of the latter pair of categories, i can think of a number of modern authors who should be there. not to mention some old-school ones who are missing. but it is nice to see Queenpin!

Interesting, eccentric list with lots to check out, although some random choices that are not really the author's best (Black Dudley and Roger Ackroyd, for example).

No Ross Macdonald, no Elmore Leonard, no Richard Price, but... The Shining? I'm glad "Faithful Place" was there.

And ignores some great children's books (Westing Game, The Long Summer...)

I mean The Long Secret...

No Simenon seemed like a big omission to me, but maybe a case of someone having too many books and diluting the vote? I didn't read into the methodology.

A particular gap for me is that I'm really a complete n00b when it comes to the espionage stuff like le carre, ambler etc.

not surprised by the omissions tbh - mystery/thriller seems to be sort of perfecived as whodunnits and light detectiving etc - often seems to push “crime” into its own cul de sac when it comes to harder boiled stuff ie most of the good crime novels etc

Le Carre is great, definitely a bit more "gray" in terms of atmosphere and tone and character, in ways that one might find off-putting but for the milieu it works, a cold war where no one is fighting (not really) and no one feels comfortable saying what they mean, and you never know which friend will be one you can count on and which one wants you dead. i'm limited in my Ambler reading but A Coffin For Dimitrios is an amazing book, certainly espionage but it just has a this great, increasingly dangerous mystery to solve.

the modern espionage master is Alan Furst imo.

love Furst, have only read a couple tho

Ellroy is reading/speaking/bragging at the Mysterious Bookshop tonight, for any NYCers

Furst is brilliant for the first ~10 or so books, but his last few have been weirdly frictionless: sadly he's coasting.

I've read quite a few of these which were all great. Of the lesser known ones, I'll rep for Beast In View by Margaret Millar. Also In A Lonely Place which is quite different from the movie version and in my view better.

ZZ -- both of those are in the recent Library Of America "Women Crime Writers" set -- which, lucky for me, I just bought cheap. I really want to read In A Lonely Place, cuz I love the movie, and a friend of mine rates the book as significantly better.

I'll have to look at some Furst - any favorites or one of those things where it's best to try to start the beginning?

i've heard that about Furst, i don't think i've hit that point yet. i'm reading them in order and somehow have held off on the last few. I read Spies of the Balkans and thought it was sublime, but maybe hitting home more for its depiction of Thessaloniki, where my father-in-law was born and raised, and where he escaped, hid, was captured, and was almost sent to Auschwitz except for an 11th hour Schindler-like move from an Italian diplomat named Guelfo Zamboni, who extended him and his entire family provisional citizenship (not mentioned in the book, but the invasion made the story hit home, as a particular close call for my wife and son, especially when you see the numbers mentioned in that wiki entry.)

anyway for Furst, I would read them in order though Night Soldiers (the first novel in his ongoing espionage series) is more of a sprawling tale with more major characters, whereas the rest of the books tend to narrow their focus to a single lead character. Dark Star is the second one, i think his longest, and it's a really gripping near-epic. the rest tend to be between 200-300 pages iirc, and if i had to pick a favorite, it would be...really tough. I recommend reading them all. they're really rich and atmospheric, and just really satisfying reads. 100% perfect for fall and winter imo.

Yeah, read them in order if you can: though most stand completely on their own, there are recurring characters and locations made richer through doing it in sequence.

Just ordered Night Soldiers, I'd never even heard of Furth before

I still love the Stieg Larsson books, although he, and maybe the Swedes in general, have a weird fascination with coffee and sandwiches.

Also, if I remember right, drinking coffee just before they go to bed

Coffee and sandwiches rule.

nordic noir is an espresso at midnight

Yeah, weird list, tho I appreciate the attempt to expand the canon, and will definitely investigate some of the Asian crime fiction chosen. Wasn't wowed by some of the authors I have read here - Jo Nesbo, Lee Child (fun, but better than the Parker novels? nah) and Tana French (thought In The Woods was a massive cop-out with a far-too obvious murderer - see also The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).

Have in the past found these lists useful for more trad stuff:

https://cozy-mystery.com/blog/mystery-writers-of-america-top-100-crime-novels-of-all-time/

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/123160.Top_100_Crime_Novels_by_British_CWA_

Ward, thank you for those. I liked Tana French but agree that I wasn’t compelled to read beyond “into the woods.” I did read maybe 5 or 6 of the lee child books, and they start fast and easy, but become bloated and full of endless gun talk.

Obviously, ever book from my personal list should be on here. Stark, Simenon, Block, Leonard, Bruen, Peace. Always nice to see a list and get the reality check that my tastes are still pretty niche. See also: any given spin or rolling stone list.

Purchase at the mystery bookstore, reprints all-
Fredric brown “madball” (carny crime)
Vera Caspary “the man who loved his wife” (psychosexual domestic thriller)
Paul conant “dr gatskill’s blue shoes” (amnesiac cop in the loony bin maybe killed somebody )

Ward, thank you for those. I liked Tana French but agree that I wasn’t compelled to read beyond “into the woods.” I did read maybe 5 or 6 of the lee child books, and they start fast and easy, but become bloated and full of endless gun talk.

Obviously, ever book from my personal list should be on here. Stark, Simenon, Block, Leonard, Bruen, Peace. Always nice to see a list and get the reality check that my tastes are still pretty niche. See also: any given spin or rolling stone list.

Purchase at the mystery bookstore, reprints all-
Fredric brown “madball” (carny crime)
Vera Caspary “the man who loved his wife” (psychosexual domestic thriller)
Paul conant “dr gatskill’s blue shoes” (amnesiac cop in the loony bin maybe killed somebody )

Broken Harbour and (especially) Faithful Place are both miles better than "Into the Woods" (and don't need to be read in order).

tana french is the best. in the woods is great and better than faithul place which feels to me like her most predictable, most conformist to genre tropes novel. Broken Harbor and The Witch Elm are my faves, but they're all eminently worth reading.

she needs to publish another book!

I think there's a sequel to The Searcher (which I haven't read) out soon

I will check out Wych Elm!

Yeah, there's a new French, The Hunter, coming in March.

Recent trend in library shop: Val McDermid's large tomes, looking suitable for walking around in, on Scottish police business and after hours. Blurbs from gen. reliable sources. Is she good? Can't decide from skimming.

Read one and didn’t swoon, haven’t returned

I think she's well regarded generally, she certainly seems to sell well - but I haven't read one either. For the Scottish crime fiction, I'm all about William McIlvanney's Laidlaw trilogy.

I read a couple of the Sam Ireland books by Jay Stringer set in Glasgow (Ways to Die in Glasgow and How to Kill Friends and Implicate People) and enjoyed them.

I read my first James Crumley: The Last Good Kiss. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I'm not going to deny his style, which alongside the references to Chandler also reminded me of Steinbeck in places. Crumley writes landscape beautifully and has a line in sentimentalising animals and women (while gleefully portraying the brutalisation of both!), but damn it was hokey in places - like Peckinpah directing Laurel and Hardy in that opening scene in the bar.

I need to feed my bulldog beer out of a hubcap and watch the stars wheel while I let it settle for a bit.

McDermid is a great interviewee but I'm still to read one of their books.

The Last Good Kiss is really good imo, but I never liked the ending, and it veers VERY CLOSE to the line of "too writerly" and self-consciously serious... imo. imo imo imo. I think Ross MacDonald comes a little close to him in that respect. I should read a MacDonald soon, it has been a while.

"too writerly" and self-consciously serious... imo

No, I can totally see this! There's a clash: between the human intelligence and heft of his writing and the cliches of the genre and all that entails. It's difficult not to wince in places.

I love film noir, read a lot of crime comics, but somehow in literature this stuff always takes a backseat for me, which is a shame as I'm sure there's plenty I'd adore. So to ring in Noirvember I'm gonna try to read one novel per week. Current line-up:

A Rage In Harlem, Chester Himes
Pop 1280, Jim Thompson
In A Lonely Place, Dorothy B. Hughes
A Leonardo Sciascia tbd

But I might have some train rides coming up as well so I prob could knock off another couple for those.

Sciascia is an interesting choice! I didn't love "Day Of The Owl" but I think I lacked a lot of context at the time I read it and would enjoy it more now. I loved "The Moro Affair" though that's more in the true crime arena. All those other three are A+ classics imo.

Daniel, re: comics -- have you read Stray Bullets? Best American comic imo, crime or otherwise.

Charles Willeford’s work is astounding. Pick-Up might have the greatest twist/gut punch ending I’ve ever encountered

Regarding Thompson, Pop. 1280 is absolutely hysterical

A Leonardo Sciascia tbd

Just so you know, Sciascia is far from the 'hard-boiled' genre so don't expect that. I'd recommend To Each His Own as the one I most enjoyed.

Sciascia is an interesting choice! I didn't love "Day Of The Owl" but I think I lacked a lot of context at the time I read it and would enjoy it more now. I loved "The Moro Affair" though that's more in the true crime arena.

I watched the movie version of Day Of The Owl the other day and it struck me how even though it's nowhere near film noir in its formal aspects - sunny Italian vistas, zero expressionism, no nighttime or rainy alleys - it v much epitomizes the noir worldview to me: society corrupt to the core, everyone is compromised, twists and turns, a protagonist who has no actual idea of what's going on and will not emerge victorious. Franco Nero, who plays the inspector, is obv perfect for that kind of role. Paradoxically this kind of bleak fatalist worldview is like comfort food for me - I once had a FAP conversation with user Tom D where I referred to Le Carré as "cozy" and he was understandably baffled by the suggestion but somehow to me it is.

Daniel, re: comics -- have you read Stray Bullets? Best American comic imo, crime or otherwise.

I have not! A friend of mine was big into it in the 00's though, need to check it out. The Brubaker/Philips team crank out pretty good hard boiled comics on the regular, if you haven't checked them out. Also really love the work of Jacques Tardi adapting French noir novelists.

3/4ths into the Himes: surprised that Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson play such a small role, and are afaict entirely unsympathetic - poor halpless Jackson and his crossdressing con artist twin Goldy elicit much more fondness. It's pretty damn full on I gotta say, with the extreme violence and everyone out for #1. I loved the scene with Jackson and the panhandler, the closest thing so far to solidarity.

I've also been playing Baldur's Gate 3 and while you wouldn't think there's any parallels there: the characters in the Himes novel only occasionally have guns, so there's a lot of hand to hand combat, much of it chaotic in a very d&d fashion; one fight takes place in a basement (dungeon!); and ppl get knocked out and recover at different times (saving throws!).

Yeah, the Day of the Owl movie is Film Soleil rather than Film Noir

tbf so is Point Blank!

To Each His Own is a great novel, and it ends on quite the note, both in terms of how the story ultimately concludes, and in terms of the implied behavior of secondary characters. i appreciate a take on the mafia which is almost entirely on the outside looking in, from the perspective of a civilian who is naive to the full extent of their evil. i like a good counterpoint to the usual; for example i enjoy a lot of the recent mafia/camorra shows from italy but the protagonists of almost all of them are so vile and the shows are so devoid of humor and indulging in such pitch-black tone that it can be p draining.

new James Ellroy The Enchanters is so good. the vibe is whiskey & dexadrine & no sleep for three days straight

I’m a Marilyn fan and did not expect to enjoy Ellroy’s dyspeptic version of her because, well, it’s Ellroy & it’s going to be gross. but the level of lore he’s woven in is nuts and I have to admit it’s almost classic-Ellroy level good. The amount of research it must have taken to be able to riff like this and resolve 75 plot threads cohesively? highwire shit. Hats off.

That being said I dunno if I could recommend it to anyone who isn’t already an Ellroy diehard. It prob won’t win him any new fans.

*dexedrine

also i read somewhere that Ellroy still writes all of his books longhand

Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun - solid B+, kind of feels like a novel cousin of that movie Shot Caller.

I saw a copy of that James Ellroy book at the library today but passed.

I like the Jordan Harper — apparently it was reissued in paperback under the title A Lesson In Violence, which is the edition I have. His kinda-sorta follow-up, The Last King Of California, is also really good.

I just read Tana French's latest, The Hunter, which is a sequel to her previous one. It's really good, and/but there's a character who'll have you literally tapping your foot going "Just fucking die already."

found Lady in the Lake (2019) by Laura Lippman a good read

From Literary Treats---a bit cozy except for serious undercurrents/tow x nervous energy, under pressure (characters not so sure of happy ending, me frequently distracted in the moment from being sure, also how how will they get there??)

Recently: Strong Poison, my first Dorothy L. Sayers, in which Lord Peter Wimsey's sterling powers of detection, also nerves, are challenged by the sensational murder trial of young Harriet Vane, a mystery writer who lived in sin with the young dead man, also an author. Zingers fly, especially from the excitable Lord and his pals, but so rare to find them doing so through perfectly timed shades of dark realness (and real enough): a lot of crime shows so try to do this, but Sayers just does it. Prisoner Vane is necessarily the least mobile, least confident character, but credibly convinces Wimsey that she's innocent (well probably). All the women here are credible, in a variety of roles, and one of LP's employees at what seems like a secretarial agency, and is, to a certain extent, but mainly is about detecting white collar crime, one of these ladies gets sent up north to do crucial legwork.
Relationship of W. and V. nuanced, and intro assures us that they did not go running around as Mr. and Mrs. Detective for several more volumes.

― dow, Tuesday, August 13, 2024