Books to Die For
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1841: Edgar Allan Poe, The Dupin Tales
J. WALLIS MARTIN
1853: Charles Dickens, Bleak House
SARA PARETSKY
1859: Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
RITA MAE BROWN
1867: Metta Fuller Victor, The Dead Letter
KARIN SLAUGHTER
1868: Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
ANDREW TAYLOR
1892: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
LINDA BARNES
1902: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
CAROL O’CONNELL
1928: Liam O’Flaherty, The Assassin
DECLAN BURKE
1929: Erskine Caldwell, The Bastard
ALLAN GUTHRIE
1930: Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
MARK BILLINGHAM
1931: Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key
DAVID PEACE
1932: Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase
REBECCA CHANCE
1932: Leslie Charteris, The Holy Terror (aka The Saint v. Scotland Yard)
DAVID DOWNING
1933: Paul Cain, Fast One
CHUCK HOGAN
1934: James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
JOSEPH FINDER
1934: Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express (aka Murder on the Calais Coach)
KELLI STANLEY
1938: Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
MINETTE WALTERS
1938: Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
PETER JAMES
1938: Rex Stout, Too Many Cooks
ARLENE HUNT
1939: Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male
CHARLAINE HARRIS
1940: Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely
JOE R. LANSDALE
1941: Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square
LAURA WILSON
1942: James M. Cain, Love’s Lovely Counterfeit
LAURA LIPPMAN
1943: Léo Malet, 120, Rue de la Gare
CARA BLACK
1946: Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop
RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS
1947: Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place
MEGAN ABBOTT
1947: Georges Simenon, Act of Passion (Lettre à mon juge)
JOHN BANVILLE
1947: Mickey Spillane, I, the Jury
MAX ALLAN COLLINS
1948: Carolyn Keene, The Ghost of Blackwood Hall
LIZA MARKLUND
1948: Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair
LOUISE PENNY
1949: Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
MICHAEL CONNELLY
1949: Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar
MARGARET MARON
1950: Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train
ADRIAN MCKINTY
1952: Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke
PHIL RICKMAN
1953: Elliott Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel (aka One for the Money)
BILL PRONZINI
1953: William P. McGivern, The Big Heat
EDDIE MULLER
1958: John D. MacDonald, The Executioners (aka Cape Fear)
JEFFERY DEAVER
1958: Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Pledge
ELISABETTA BUCCIARELLI
1960: Clarence Cooper Jr., The Scene
GARY PHILLIPS
1960: Margaret Millar, A Stranger in My Grave
DECLAN HUGHES
1960: Harry Whittington, A Night for Screaming
BILL CRIDER
1960: Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser
SCOTT PHILLIPS
1962: Eric Ambler, The Light of Day (aka Topkapi)
M. C. BEATON
1962: P. D. James, Cover Her Face
DEBORAH CROMBIE
1962: Kenneth Orvis, The Damned and the Destroyed
LEE CHILD
1962: Richard Stark, The Hunter (aka Point Blank and Payback)
F. PAUL WILSON
1963: Nicolas Freeling, Gun Before Butter (aka Question of Loyalty)
JASON GOODWIN
1963: John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
ÉLMER MENDOZA
1963: Ed McBain, Ten Plus One
DEON MEYER
1964: Ross Macdonald, The Chill
JOHN CONNOLLY
1964: Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280
JO NESBØ
1965: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Roseanna
QIU XIAOLONG
1966: Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
JOSEPH WAMBAUGH
1967: Agatha Christie, Endless Night
LAUREN HENDERSON
1968: Peter Dickinson, Skin Deep (aka The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest)
LAURIE R. KING
1969: Ross Macdonald, The Goodbye Look
LINWOOD BARCLAY
1970: Joseph Hansen, Fadeout
MARCIA MULLER
1970: George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle
ELMORE LEONARD
1971: James McClure, The Steam Pig
MIKE NICOL
1973: Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead
WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER
1974: Donald Goines, Daddy Cool
KEN BRUEN
1975: James Crumley, The Wrong Case
DAVID CORBETT
1975: Colin Dexter, Last Bus to Woodstock
PAUL CHARLES
1976: Jean-Patrick Manchette, 3 to Kill (Le petit bleu de la côte ouest)
JAMES SALLIS
1976: Mary Stewart, Touch Not the Cat
M. J. ROSE
1976: Newton Thornburg, Cutter and Bone
GEORGE PELECANOS
1976: Trevanian, The Main
JOHN MCFETRIDGE
1977: Edward Bunker, The Animal Factory
JENS LAPIDUS
1977: John Gregory Dunne, True Confessions
S. J. ROZAN
1977: Ruth Rendell, A Judgement in Stone
PETER ROBINSON
1978: James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss
DENNIS LEHANE
1979: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Southern Seas (Los mares del sur)
LEONARDO PADURA
1980: Andreu Martín, Prótesis (Prosthesis)
CRISTINA FALLARÁS
1981: Robert B. Parker, Early Autumn
COLIN BATEMAN
1981: Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE GRANGÉ
1982: Sue Grafton, A Is for Alibi
MEG GARDINER
1982: Stephen King, Different Seasons
PAUL CLEAVE
1982: Sara Paretsky, Indemnity Only
DREDA SAY MITCHELL
1983: Elmore Leonard, LaBrava
JAMES W. HALL
1984: Kem Nunn, Tapping the Source
DENISE HAMILTON
1987: Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
CHRISTOPHER BROOKMYRE
1988: Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
KATHY REICHS
1988: Sara Paretsky, Toxic Shock (aka Blood Shot)
N. J. COOPER
1990: A. S. Byatt, Possession
ERIN HART
1990: Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem
KATHRYN FOX
1990: Derek Raymond, I Was Dora Suarez
1991: Lawrence Block, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
ALISON GAYLIN
1992: Michael Connelly, The Black Echo
JOHN CONNOLLY
1992: Peter Høeg, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (aka Smilla’s Sense of Snow)
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM
1992: Philip Kerr, A Philosophical Investigation
PAUL JOHNSTON
1992: Margaret Maron, Bootlegger’s Daughter
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING
1992: Richard Price, Clockers
GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD
1992: James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly
SARA GRAN
1992: Donna Tartt, The Secret History
TANA FRENCH
1993: Jill McGown, Murder . . . Now and Then
SOPHIE HANNAH
1993: Scott Smith, A Simple Plan
MICHAEL KORYTA
1994: Peter Ackroyd, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (aka The Trial of Elizabeth Cree)
BARBARA NADEL
1994: Caleb Carr, The Alienist
REGGIE NADELSON
1994: Henning Mankell, The Man Who Smiled
ANN CLEEVES
1995: James Ellroy, American Tabloid
STUART NEVILLE
1996: George Pelecanos, The Big Blowdown
DECLAN BURKE
1997: Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood
THOMAS H. COOK
1997: Natsuo Kirino, Out (Auto)
DIANE WEI LIANG
1997: Walter Mosley, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
MARTYN WAITES
1997: Ian Rankin, Black and Blue
BRIAN MCGILLOWAY
1997: Donald E. Westlake, The Ax
LISA LUTZ
1998: Cara Black, Murder in the Marais
YRSA SIGURDARDÓTTIR
1998: Reginald Hill, On Beulah Height
VAL MCDERMID
1998: Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red
REED FARREL COLEMAN
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
MARGIE ORFORD
1999: Robert Wilson, A Small Death in Lisbon
SHANE MALONEY
2000: David Peace, Nineteen Seventy-Four
EOIN MCNAMEE
2000: Scott Phillips, The Ice Harvest
EOIN COLFER
2001: Harlan Coben, Tell No One
SEBASTIAN FITZEK
2001: Dennis Lehane, Mystic River
CHRIS MOONEY
2005: Peter Temple, The Broken Shore
JOHN HARVEY
2007: Gil Adamson, The Outlander
C. J. CARVER
2007: James Lee Burke, The Tin Roof Blowdown
KATHERINE HOWELL
2007: Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know
BILL LOEHFELM
2007: Perihan Mağden, Escape
MEHMET MURAT SOMER
2008: Mark Gimenez, The Perk
ANNE PERRY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT JOHN CONOLLY and DECLAN BURKE
CREDITS
INDEX OF CONTRIBUTING AND SUBJECT AUTHORS
INTRODUCTION
Why does the mystery novel enjoy such enduring appeal? There is no simple answer. It has a distinctive capacity for subtle social commentary, a concern with the disparity between law and justice, and a passion for order, however compromised. Even in the vision of the darkest of mystery writers, it provides us with a glimpse of the world as it might be, a world in which good men and women do not stand idly by and allow the worst aspects of human nature to triumph without opposition. It can touch upon all these facets while still entertaining the reader—and its provision of entertainment is not the least of its many qualities.
But the mystery novel has always prized character over plot, which may come as some surprise to its detractors. True, this is not a universal tenet: there are degrees to which mysteries occupy themselves with the identity of the criminal, as opposed to, say, the complexities of human motivation. Some, such as the classic puzzle mystery, tend toward the former; others are more concerned with the latter. But the mystery form understands that plot comes out of character, and not just that: it believes that the great mystery is character.
If we take the view that fiction is an attempt to find the universal in the specific, to take individual human experiences and try to come to some understanding of our common nature through them, then the question at the heart of all novels can be expressed quite simply as: Why? Why do we do the things that we do? It is asked in Bleak House just as it is asked in The Maltese Falcon. It haunts The Pledge as it does The Chill. But the mystery novel, perhaps more than any other, not only asks this question; it attempts to suggest an answer to it as well.
But where to start? There are so many books from which to choose, even for the knowledgeable reader who has already taken to swimming in mystery’s dark waters, and huge numbers of new titles appear on our bookshelves each week. It is hard enough to keep up with authors who are alive, but those who are deceased are at risk of being forgotten entirely. There are many treasures to be found, and their burial should not be permitted, even if there are some among these authors who might have been surprised to find themselves remembered at all, for they were not writing for the ages.
And so, quite simply, we decided to give mystery writers from around the world the opportunity to enthuse about their favorite novel, and in doing so we hoped to come up with a selection of books that was, if not definitive (which would be a foolish and impossible aim), then heartfelt, and flawless in its inclusions if not its omissions. After all, the creation of any anthology such as this is inevitably accompanied by howls of anguish from those whose first instinct is always to seek out what is absent rather than applaud what is present. (We could probably have given the book the alternative title But What About . . . ?)
With that in mind, let’s tackle just one such elephant in this particular room. It’s Raymond Chandler, as is so often the case when mystery fiction is under discussion. The Big Sleep is the Chandler novel frequently cited as the greatest mystery ever written, often by those who haven’t read very much at all in the genre. In fact, so ingrained has this idea become that The Big Sleep is a novel beloved even of people who have never read it, or who have seen only the 1946 movie based upon it. Fond though we are of The Big Sleep—for there is much in it of which to be fond, and much to admire—there’s a strong case to be made that not only is it not the greatest mystery ever written, it’s not even the greatest mystery Chandler ever wrote.
The Big Sleep is not the subject of an essay in this volume, but if not The Big Sleep, then what? Well, two of Chandler’s novels are discussed here. The appearance of one, Farewell, My Lovely, could probably have been anticipated, but the second, The Little Sister, is slightly more unexpected. When we were discussing this project with Joe R. Lansdale, who writes here on Farewell, My Lovely, we all agreed, with the misplaced confidence of those who are convinced that they can get the army to Moscow before winter sets in, that Michael Connelly would pick The Long Goodbye, as his affection for it was widely known (although that affection, as you’ll see when you read his essay, is tied up with Robert Altman’s 1973 film adaptation of the novel). While The Long Goodbye does get a glowing mention in Connelly’s essay, he chose instead to focus on The Little Sister, because that book is more personal to him.
Which brings us to the main thinking behind this anthology. This is not a pollster’s assembly of novels, compiled with calculators and spreadsheets. Neither is it a potentially exhausting litany of titles that winds back to the dawn of fiction, chiding the reader for his or her presumed ignorance in the manner of a compulsory reading list handed out in a bad school at the start of summer to cast a pall over its students’ vacation time. What we sought from each of the contributors to this volume was passionate advocacy: we wanted them to pick one novel, just one, that they would place in the canon. If you found our contributors in a bar some evening, and the talk turned (as it almost
inevitably would) to favorite novels, it would be the single book that each writer would press upon you, the book that, if there was time and the stores were still open, they would leave the bar in order to purchase for you, so they could be confident they had done all in their power to make you read it.
If nothing else, that should explain the omission of any title that, even now, might prove to be a source of aggravation to you, the reader—and, in the great scheme of things, we’d hazard there are fewer than might be expected, and certainly few neglected writers, although, inevitably, there are those, too, or else this book would be too heavy to lift. There is greatness in all of the novels under discussion in this volume, but, equally, there is huge affection and respect for them on the part of their advocates.
This brings us to the second purpose of this book. Because of the personal nature of the attachment that the contributors have to their chosen books, you will, in many cases, learn something about the contributor as well as the subject, and not a little about the art and craft of writing along the way. Thus, we have Joseph Wambaugh, as a young cop-turned-writer, finding himself in the extraordinary position of discussing a work in progress with Truman Capote; Linwood Barclay, then only an aspiring novelist, sharing a meal with Ross Macdonald, a meal that arises out of one of the simplest and yet most intimate of reader-writer connections, the fan letter; and Ian Rankin encountering the extraordinary figure of Derek Raymond in a London bookstore. More important, as all writers are the products of those who went before them, those whom we love the most tend to influence us the most, whether stylistically, philosophically, or morally (for, as someone once noted, all mystery writers are secret moralists). If a writer whose work you love is featured in this book as the subject of an essay, then there’s a very good chance that you’ll also enjoy the work of the essayist, too. Similarly, if one of your favorite writers has chosen to write, in turn, on a beloved writer of his or her own, then you’re probably going to learn a great deal about how that contributor’s writing came to be formed, as well as being introduced to the novelist at least partly responsible for that act of formation.
While this volume is obviously ideal for dipping into when you have a quiet moment, enabling you to read an essay or two before moving on, there is also a pleasure to be had from the slow accumulation of its details. Reading through the book chronologically, as we have done during the editing process, patterns begin to emerge, some anticipated, some less so. There is, of course, the importance of the great Californian crime writers—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and James M. Cain—to the generations of writers who have followed them and, indeed, to one another: so Macdonald’s detective, Lew Archer, takes his name in part from Sam Spade’s murdered partner in The Maltese Falcon, while Chandler builds on Hammett, and then Macdonald builds on Chandler but also finds himself being disparaged by the older author behind his back, adding a further layer of complication to their relationship. But the writer who had the greatest number of advocates was not any of these men: it was the Scottish author Josephine Tey, who is a figure of huge significance to a high number of the female contributors to this book.