A Game of Readers

I love crime novels. I consider Lawrence Block and Raymond Chandler godly. Tell us whats good in the genre.

James Ellroy's LA Quartet

(Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz)

What made me realize that Crime fiction could be epic and literary.

Read Block. Read Pelecanos. Some of the best writers around are in the crime genre.

I haven't read a lot of crime novels but I'm a big fan of film noir. Many of these films were based on the novels of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, or Cornell Woolrich and I'm interested in expanding my reading habits into the genre.

Any suggestions?

LAWRENCE BLOCK. Get his anthology ENOUGH ROPE which has short stories of each of his series characters and it includes pretty much every short story he ever wrote.

He made me want to write my own novels.

Dennis Lehane wrote 5 fantastic P.I. novels about a man and woman detective agency in boston that's funny, poignant, and at the right moments, KICK. ASS.

George P. Pelecanos is probably the best new guy. His books are set in D.C. and like The Wire, the plots are intricate and you get the viewpoint of every character. His quartets are great.

The Strange and Quinn series:

RIGHT AS RAIN
HELL TO PAY
SOUL CIRCUS.
HARD REVOLUTION
Be SURE to read in order.

His other D.C. series which spans about 50 years

THE BIG BLOWBACK
KING SUCKERMAN
THE SWEET FOREVER
SHAME THE DEVIL

It seems you're quite passionate about this genre.

I was expecting two or three suggestions but glad to get all sixteen. Any of those that you would recommend starting off with? Ideally something I can pick up between studying at work and avoiding actually working.

Enough Rope. All the stories are 3-20 pages long. There are 80 stories in all and good to pick up at any time for a quick read.

I'm a big Block nerd. I named the forum after his novel EVERYBODY DIES

Much thanks. I'll pick it up Friday.

Be prepared that though its a paperback, it's thick and dense enough to be used as a blunt weapon.

Good fiction and a viable weapon. SOLD!

Pelecanos has written for The Wire and has a commentary on the first season box, IIRC.

Michael Connelly is my personal favourite of the newer strand of crime writers. John Connolly sways between good and great for me (gets a bit too gothic sometimes). Lee Child is an excellent fast read, although I suppose he's more thriller than crime per se.

Does Hiaasen count as crime?

I'd count Hiaasen as humor, actually.

I've tried reading Connelly a number of times. I'm not sure why, but I can't get through his stuff.

I love John Connolly, but I think The Black Angel is the weakest. The Killing Kind and White Road was brilliant though.

Agreed he kind of hit a peak at Killing Kind (Mr. Pudd and the opening murder still make me shudder), Bad Men wasn't particularly good stuff either although there are moments of utter brilliance in Nocturnes.

Parker is at his best when he's a sarcastic mopey bastard.

I look forward to what Connolly is going to do with what the bad guys thought Parker's origins were.

I like the Parker books but having read a few of his short stories I wouldn't mind another collection of those instead - maybe give Parker a rest for a while.

That said Louis and Angel improve as characters as each book goes on :)

Is Louis like Parker in that he can see ghosts too? I couldn't figure that out in The Black Angel.

Parker once said that he tried writing a Louis and Angel book, but it was turning into too much of a road trip comedy. I wouldn't mind a book like that.

Let's see

G M Ford's Frank Corso books : Fury, Black River and Blind Eye

James Lee Burke : pretty much all of it.

Vachss : If you don't read Vachss books then you're a pussy.

Lee Child's Reacher novels.

Stephen Hunter writes a lot of fairly good stuff.

Dennis Lehane is good.

Fuck there is loads of this stuff I could reccomend but I don't have the time left in my lunch hour for this.

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Can the Saint novels fit in here? If "yes", I'm adding them to the recommendations list.

As in the show?

There were novels before it?

There were novels before it.

Dating back to about 1929 or so, in fact, with Meet the Tiger, running about 50-60 novels and collections of shorter tales in all, most by Leslie Charteris, the later ones from the 1960's to 1980's written by others working under Charteris' editorship. Two, including one adapting an earlier draft of the Val Kilmer movie's script into something more endurable by longtime fans, were written by one Burl Barer after Charteris' death.

I have about 10-15 of these volumes so far myself, and desperately wish that someone would get the lot back into print before I die of some unspeakable disease or old age, whichever gets me first.

saint.org will have a lengthy primer on the history and fandom of the "Robin Hood of Modern Crime" for you, if you have an hour to spare for it.

I recently read some of the original Perry Mason novels and was amazed at how good they were. Same with the original novel SHAFT before it went to T.V. and movies. Shaft, in particular, was extremely dark and much more political

And there's your source/inspirational material for Hawk from the Spenser novels right there, perhaps? Something for a separate thread, maybe...

Eh, Shaft was pretty clearly a good guy with concern over other black people in society. Hawk is just Hawk and does good things because he likes Spenser and gets paid. He couldn't care less about race.

Leslie Charteris was an Oxford-educated Singaporean Chinese who adopted the writing name to base his career on.

The early SAINT novels from the 30s were as hard-boiled and ruthless as anything you could find in the genre, especially THE SAINT IN NEW YORK, which had Simon Templar hired by a corrupt police commissioner to kill the six worst gang bosses in New York in as many days, which he does with gleeful efficiency.

It was made into an incredibly hard-nosed movie around 1934.

Yep. The Saint in New York was one of the first I'd read, and I've got one of the more recently reprinted editions in my collection. Hell of a read, that was.

"Is" would be more appropriate, though, as I dig it out for an occasional re-read once or thrice a year.

The movie is very good too, especially since it was made before Hays Code censorship kicked into place, so it could indulge in total amorality.

Richard Stark's(aka Donald Westlake) Parker series is excellent and lives up to its lofty reputation.

Dan Simmons' Joe Kurtz series was a ton of fun and was a throwback to the hardboiled stuff I love. Unfortunately Simmons has decided to concentrate on his other projects and the series is on permanent hiatus.

I haven't read G.M. Ford. Whats he like?

Dennis Lehane's Gennaro and Kenzie books:
A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR
DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND
SACRED
GONE, BABY, GONE
PRAYERS FOR RAIN
Hard-boiled, great pacing and the writing blazes. The thing I like most about crime fiction, is that its rarely entirely about the crime or the inciting incident itself - it talks about all kinds of things and its done subtly enough to really engage you.

Lehane currently has a play running in New York.