Mystery/noir/detective novels S/D

It mentions Charles Willeford too, who I also recommend, especially Sideswipe.

Mark Billingham
Cara Black
Deborah Crombie
Sue Grafton (although the Kinsey Millhone books are a little bit like the Sweet Valley High of mysteries, black dress = gold lavaliere)
Reginald Hill
Faye Kellerman
Laurie King
Peter Lovesy
Gillian Linscott
Val McDermid
Barry Maitland
Denise Mina
Ian Rankin
Kathy Reichs
Victoria Thompson

none of these are really noir though

Paul Charles
Liz Evans

Start with King Suckerman.

DENNIS LEHANE is a little more pulpy and cinematic but very good. The way he uses South Boston and environs is similar to the way that Pelecanos evokes the local color of Washington DC. One thing about Lehane: his novels are (mostly) similar to fault. I have a hardtime distinguishing one from the other, though Mystic River is a standout (and also the first one I read).

I've read 3 or 4 novels by MICHAEL CONNELLY this summer. He's a little more conventional, the books are very plot-driven and thoroughly researched. The Harry Bosch books qualify as police procedurals I suppose, entertaining and informative but not especially "literary" in terms of prose style or larger ambition.

On the British side: I'm not sure that Colin Dexter or Agatha Christie count (certainly don't qualify as noir), but they're good.

I mean, here I'm trying to solve a murder, right? And all I need is a little information to clear things up, right? So, I go track down some guy who says that some other guy has the information I need. Are you with me so far?

OK. So I'm all "Swell! I'll just go meet up with this guy" - OK? But when I get there he's always face down in a pool of blood with massive head injuries and some extra ventilation holes in his lungs. And I don't mean just once or twice this happens. I mean six different times.

So, I'm like - whoa! Six times!! And I'm thinking, maybe there's more to this than coincidence. You know what I mean?

Cain is magnificent (The butterfly is my fave). Jim Thompson is the best. Early Willeford rocks as well (not the Hoak Mosely books) -Cockfighter, Burnt Orange Heresy.

I've read every Ross Macdonald (they're all kind of the same -something happened ten or twenty years ago and has been festering in the SoCal sun).

Also not really noir but cynically unique are Dick James (English) Harpur & Ives series.

By the third Ellroy book I began feeling oppressed by the relentless know-it-allism of his cynicism, kind of like with Vachss no-limit paranoia. The first few I read by them blew me away, but after that it was diminishing returns. John D MacDonald has a similar world-weary, self-pity riff he likes to get into whenever the story slows down (to me he's kind of a cheap Mailer).

I'm almost embarassed to admit I read Parker, but I don't own a TV and it's the closest I can get to that.

I read Dick Francis too (I like horses and frosty mornings on the downs) His glorifaction of average-guy competence always cheers me up for some reason. Like Parker, he's a TV substitute. I like Sue Grafton because she's very non-judgmental about the characters she deals with. She observes without condemning.

Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy is excellent, though the last volume set in post-war Vienna might as well have been called 'The Fourth Man'.

I like Charlie Williams' 'yokel noir' novels- they're what you'd imagine Magnus Mills would come up with if he wrote crime fiction.

I'd forgotten Charles Williams. Yeah, 'yokel noir' (as is Cain's Butterfly).

Early Mickey Sillane had stupid stories featuring stupid characters but great mono-syllabic style (i.e., "deck of butts" for package of cigarettes -lots of hard consonnants). Hard to read or care about through the stupidity though.

Not-at-all-noir: Arthur Upfield's Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte series (Australia) and Tony (page-turner) Hillerman's Chee/Leaphorn series (New Mexico) have great tracking, etc. (I live in the desert). Nevada Barr not as good but environmentally / ecologically conscious and outdoorsy.

I loved the Lord Peter series when I read them years ago. I've probably forgotten well enough to recycle them. And Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time.

Someone just gave me a few Marcia Muller books - anyone know of they're any good?

I began re-reading Ross MacDonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse) and realized he's more literate than I'd remembered. Funnier than Chandler, deeper than Parker, not as epic (i.e., self-absorbed) as either of them, but far slyer. The 60's ambience seems historical more than dated.

What I can't understand is why he's out of print in the US.

Tey's Daughter of Time is on my list of top ten books of all time.

Has anyone read any Minette Walters? Those BBC adaptations were all quite good - I wonder if the books are as well.

Chandler was scared of him and tried to nip his career in the bud.

Creepy, interesting, and intelligent. Basically, what happens once a normal person commits a crime.

Search: Jason Starr, anything you can find. He's great at describing the mechanics of being an everyday, non-Woody Allen, possibly outerborough New Yorker, he's got a great deadpan sense of humor and he really knows how to tell a story and keep you guessing, as on the one hand he lets his protagonists slowly but surely sink deeper and deeper into trouble, and on the other hand he provides a possible avenue of escape for them.

To start, you could read their Hard Case collabo, Bust, which apparently has a sequel coming out sometime this year.

OK, for 2008 I've discovered Larry Block.

Wait, apparently this isn't the thread where I asked for a Simenon recommendation. Just one that would be short and fun to read for someone who isn't particularly into the genre. Someone suggested that it would make a good book to read in French, and they look promising, but there are so many to choose from.

'The Little Man from Archangel' or 'Striptease' or 'Red Lights' or 'Tropic Moon' or 'Strangers in the House' are all short, good and self-contained Simenons.

A million years ago I read Maigret et le tueur and I told a friend and he said "Maigret est le tueur? Not much mystery to that, is ther? They gave it away in that title!"

I have been investigating Larry Block's various characters and I know everybody likes Scudder and I like Scudder too, but so far my favorite character is Keller, the hit man.

It would have been really awesome if Maigret had turned out to be le tueur the whole time.

I was trying to talk my friend into doing a ready-for-youtube sock puppet murder mystery show, where a sock puppet would investigate the murders of other sock puppets, Murder She Wrote style, except every one would eventually turn out to have been a suicide. I think this idea, if done correctly, could be awesome. ©2008 Casuistry.

She never murder

Try it again:
You never murder

I love Lawrence Block.
Since Thanksgiving of last year I've read all the Keller novels, most of the Scudder's (still working), a couple Bernie Rhodenbarr books and most of the hard case crime reprints (the best of those imo: 'the girl with the long green heart' and 'lucky at cards.')

I love Keller's descent in stamp collecting. Keller (or Block, or both) has some really useful insights into the nature of collecting -- i've been working up something in my mind about this for months now. The ability of a hobby or collection to immerse a person and remove him from his daily life, the irrationality of paying large sums of of money for essentially 'worthless' pieces of paper. It's all very interesting to me.

I don't know if I have a favorite Matt Scudder book, as I haven't finished them all yet. The first one I read was "When The Sacred Ginmill Closes" which still stands out as a favorite; since that I went back and have been reading them in order. I am in the middle of "A Dance At The Slaughterhouse" right now. The same mechanics are at play in a lot of these stories, but the way Block writes about New York and about Scudder's internal life keep them from feeling repetitive.

There is a lot of talk in this thread about the Spenser books by Robert B Parker -- they're pretty light overall. I rather enjoyed the first few I read ("The Godwulf Manuscript", "Mortal Stakes" especially) but ultimately the series didn't grip me. I didn't read them in order, but I did try to read the earlier ones when I could find them, because the conventional wisdom is that the series went down hill. I'm inclined to agree a bit -- extended scenes of Spenser and Susan mulling over their relationship and its trials are not so trilling to me. Or scenes they they play with their dog. The earlier stories really work because of the action and quick pacing; when that took a back seat to the personal life of Chef Spenser... well..

My FAVE FAVE FAVE mystery novelist is Donald Westlake. We have a thread on him though. But suffice to say his Parker books are far and away the best books about a professional criminal that I've read -- I even rate them above Block's Keller series; where Keller is easy for a reader to like, there is just nothing in Parker's personality for the reader to grab onto and empathize with. This probably turns some people on, but I think it's great. Other fave Westlake novels are probably "The Ax" and "The Hook." They are both very very dark. Of his lighter, more comic work I think the best ones are "The Fugitive Pigeon" and "Somebody Owes Me Money" which are about poor schmucks who find themselves in bad situations. "The Hot Rock" is a classic, but I haven't read any of his other Dortmunder novels yet. I still have a ton of his standalone novels to read too, just tons of them....

I am getting into Ross Thomas currently. I just read one of his books, written under the name Oliver Bleeck. I liked it and I definitely have room in my diet for more political thrillers/espionage style tales. Anyone have any favorites?

Charles Williams was mentioned upthread and my favorite of his is "A Touch of Death" which Hard Case Crime reprinted. I know "The Hot Spot" is considered by many to be the classic, and it's good and hooks you fast, but it's got a fairly conventional 'working stiff gets into trouble cuz of a broad' storyline.

Jim Thompson: still have a lot to read, but my faves are probably "The Getaway", "Savage Night" and "The Grifters." Also really liked "Pop. 1280" once I got into it.

I need to read more Simenon, but my favorite of the few I have read is "Dirty Snow." Just an amazing books. Helen only likes his Maigret novels, and we have a ton of those around and I've read a few but it gets to be just too overwhelming.. so many books sitting around that I need to read.

i tend to buy bulk lots of books on ebay tbh, so stuff piles up very quickly. when i decided i wanted to read ross macdonald i just bought the whole lew archer series cheap in one go. (unfortunately i found out i didn't love macdonald as much as some other people. i only read four or five of them. i'll go back to him eventually..) likewise I have Block, Westlake, McBain, Thompson, Simenon etc just lying around taking up space waiting to be read. I kinda like it. But it's a lot of pressure...

Do you like Harry Whittington? If you like Jim Thompson, I think you'll like Whittington. The Black Lizard books are good and cheap, although you should avoid Ticket to Hell, which is about a guy driving around the desert in a Porsch, being a hero.

If you haven't, you should read Joel Townsely Rogers' The Red Right Hand! Creepy backwoods stuff, good on atmosphere. Kind of like reading Shirley Jackson with a locked room plot sewn in.

And P.M. Hubbard! He's great!

And Elizabeth Sanxay Holding is good. She's basically the grandma of psychological suspense.

thanks for all of these recommendations br*ce!!! whittington is intriguing, as he;s someone i've heard mentioned here and there but i have not read. quick google suggests he wrote over 150 novels and at one point averaging 7 per year! that's a lot of writing.

also tbh driving around the desert in a porsche being a hero sounds cool.

Anyone want to recommend me some good short fiction from this genre?

(like, specific stories, I mean. things from non-mystery writers incorporating elements of the detective/crime genre into a particular piece of short fiction welcome as well.)

My first Richard Price, Lush Life! Gotta read Clockers and prob all his.
Some good stuff here:
Crime Fiction, S/D

Tana French has a new book out today, The Searcher. Every time she publishes something I rush to read it on the first day, get all the way through it, think, "Hmm, not sure if I liked that," and then immediately start looking forward to her next book.

Halfway through The Searcher and I know it’s the hinge in the story where it’s obvious lives are about to start getting ruined but I don’t know whose, yet.

Anyway Dublin Murder Squad, ranked:

Faithful Place
The Secret Place
The Likeness
The Trespasser
In the Woods
Broken Harbour

Oh I guess the other crime fiction thread is the more active one, pretend I posted there #onethread

i just read the searcher and enjoyed it more than her last couple. it's a lot more straightforward, which might not be for everyone, but it seemed like she was trying something different and it worked for me.