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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Detective fiction

11:56 / 18.07.02

Recommendations please...

I've encountered quite a few - Chandler, Hammett, Wilkie Collins, Poe's Dupin stories, DLS, etc etc. But all if a sudden I need more... I'm told that Margery Allingham is quite good, can anyone confirm?

I'm interested in the development of the genre too, and surely there must be someone out there in the Barbeverse who knows something about that...

13:41 / 18.07.02

A number of Australian women writers have been to the fore in rewriting the conventions of crime fiction. So you find some interesting slants on femininity and criminality, women and violence, political correctness and private investigators, in the novels of Marele Day (The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, The Case of the Chinese Boxes, The Last Tango of Dolores Delgado), Jan McKemmish ( Only Lawyers Dancing), Claire McNab (Lessons in Murder, Fatal Reunion, Death Down Under, Cop Out, Off Key, Inner Circle), Kerry Greenwood (Cocaine Blues, Murder on the Ballarat Train) and Finola Moorehead (Remember the Tarantella, Still Murder).

There are quite a few more by these writers - these are only the titles I can remember at the moment. Light reading - but I've enjoyed Claire McNab's series featuring her cool, charismatic and lesbian Detective Inspector Carol Ashton. The Phryne Fisher (a stylish flapper sleuth) series by Kerry Greenwood (who's a lawyer with an historical interest in the late 1920's) is very enjoyable too.

Goodness Gracious Meme

21:08 / 18.07.02

I love Satyajit Ray's Feluda stories. Written for kids and not particularly known outside India, but there's a collection called 'the adventures of feluda'

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:51 / 18.07.02

Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu series isn't a bad read, though I did find myself distinctly unsettled with the sheer number of "yellow peril" references. It almost reaches "but I'm using PHRENOLOGY to PROVE they are EVIL!" levels at some point. That aside, though, they're quite good in a very set-piece way. As is most crime, I guess.

There's some etexts here.

ONLY NICE THINGS

00:10 / 19.07.02

I'm a little surprised that Cavatina didn't mention Dorothy Porter's The Monkey's Mask...

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

06:24 / 19.07.02

I am deeply in love with the Nate Heller books of Max Collins. They take historical events and weave fictional characters into them. The best is "Stolen Away", but the Amelia Erhardt novel is best avoided.

Walter Mosely is very good as well...

11:52 / 20.07.02

Michael Innes. I love him. Occasional rather annoying moments when the characters say things like "Ooh, this is a bit like a Michael Innes novel", but otherwise donnish and amusing, and John & Judith are the best detective/lady romance since Harriet & Peter.

14:42 / 20.07.02

Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason and Della Street pretty hot and heavy as well.

And there's Simenon... rather too much of Simenon, but there it is.

14:46 / 20.07.02

Margery Allingham is rather in the Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie. In fact, I've thought that Margery's character, whose name escapes me, is a Lord Wimsey parody, or anti-Lord-Wimsey character.

I just finished a book by a new writer for me, Deborah Crombie. It's called _A Finer End_ & was quite enjoyable. I love Thomas Perry's Jane Whitefield series-not, strictly speaking, detective novels, rather more suspense books. _A Place of Execution_ by Val MacDiarmid (I think that's right.) is extraordinary. The character created by Carol O'Connell (I'm having a hard time remembering these names exactly), Mallory, is unsympathetic to me, but fascinating. O'Connell's _Stone Angel_ is amazingly good. _The Judas Child_ is incredible.

Anyone else read any of these? What do y'all think?

21:45 / 20.07.02

Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night A Traveller" detective fiction about fiction.

Pyncheon - "The Crying of Lot 49". Crazy consipracy only it may not be. She's only detecting what she creates. Maybe.

Falling Angels (Angel Heart the film is based on it). Can't remember the author.

Similarly for Todo Modo and The Day of the Owl. These two are really good Italian detective fiction.

Morse, obviously. (Colin Dexter)

Daziel and Pascoe - Reginald Hill (Also ionterseting are the Joe Sixsmith books about a black Luton based PI).

Edmund Crisp - Holy Disorders. Probably OOP but well worth a look for the gloriously English nature of it all (it's all church organists and Oxford professors in the country). Beuatiful chapter gently homaging/paryoding The Raven.

There are loads more but I'm too tired to think. Go on read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew...I dares ya.

The Return Of Rothkoid

22:01 / 20.07.02

Falling Angel is by William Hjortsberg. It's oop, as far as I know, and when I finally found a copy, I was pretty happy.

Although.

It is fairly obvious from the outset, even if you haven't seen Angel Heart... the flyleaf illustrations kinda give it away...

23:41 / 20.07.02

Reginald Hill is pretty damn good; the later, more recent Dalziel and Pascoe (the unfilmed ones) are really rather good. Similarly, late Dexter is great. The early Morses are about the crime; the late Morses are about Morse, and the Remorseful Day is a really damn good book in general - Dexter learns how to write as they go on.

I'd also plug PD James a bit - Original Sin is interesting. But also: James Ellroy. LA Confidential is great - it's badly written and pulpy, but the plot is wonderful. And it's ten times more complex than the film - the film was a faithful adaptation, bar it left about five minor and one major plotline out, and the reason it id that was that the major plotline is simply unfilmable due to taste and libel laws. But it's a great read.

And I'd also recommend Elmore Leonard's crime fiction; the filmed ones, Get Shorty and Rum Punch are good, but Maximum Bob is great fun.

And finally: Ian Rankin's Rebus books aren't half bad as crime fiction goes. Interesting characterisation, interesting plots, trying to break away from the norm; local politics often crops up. As with all the above: I liked them, though YMMV.

A

04:50 / 21.07.02

Kinky Friedman! He's a Jewish humourous country and western singer turned mystery novelist, he's written well over a dozen books and they're all great.

16:48 / 22.07.02

On the subject of mysteries, and hopefully not hijacking the thread, I'd heard GK Chesterton referred to here and other places so much that I decided to read one of his book, it was a Father Brown stories collection, but eventually the gender politics of his stories really got under my skin. Did I start with a bad one? What do people like about him--is it his mysteries or am I on a completely wrong tack? what book would you start with?

appreciate any advice; if this feels too off the mystery topic, I'd be happy to start a new thread on Chesterton.

12:13 / 23.07.02

Try Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday. Really twisting story about an undercover cop in an organisation of anarchists. Great fun and makes little sense. Goes a bit Scanner Darkly but less speed driven and more English.

16:05 / 23.07.02

KM - the NUMBER of Man Who Was Thursday threads we've already had, you wouldn't believe...

09:14 / 24.07.02

There's a thread on TMWWT here. I'm also interested in other people's recommendations of the best Chesterton to read.

(prays that web-fu worked ...)

13:48 / 11.08.02

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. If I remember correctly it has been described as metaphysical detective novel. Used be studied for the narrative part of English lit classes at Edinburgh.
Three short stories rather than a novel, but (a bit like les trois contes) it read more as a novel split into three separate parts.

11:15 / 12.08.02

Just finished Eliot Pattison's second detective novel with a twist, Water Touching Stone, having much enjoyed his first, The Skull Mantra. The twist is that the detective is a former high Chinese government official in disgrace and in a Tibetan labour camp who ends up investigating murders in modern-day Tibet. Wonderful background of Tibetan buddhism and the resistance to the Chinese jackboot. I have had a wee greet to myself at the end of both.

"See me for what I am, OK?"

19:54 / 16.03.04

Okay, the fact that no-one has mentioned her thus far makes me wonder if I'm gonna get bitch-slapped for this, but:

Patricia Cornwell?

At least, the first 8 or 9 Scarpetta stories (The last two have been...different. Though interesting.)

05:21 / 17.03.04

Michael Dibdin's books are always good for a spin, particularly if they feature Aurelio Zen.

I also have a soft spot for Robert Parker's Spenser novels (while recognising that they're immensely formulaic, averagely written and occasionally self-parodic, particularly as the series has gone on). Start with the Godwulf Manuscript, the Judas Goat or God Save the Child.

I assume we're talking detective fiction in the 'murder mystery' vein, rather than detective fiction in the 'harrowing glimpse into the human soul' vein? If the latter, then Dennis Lehane reads really well (he wrote the original book, Mystic River), but you might be a bit depressed when you finish.

06:26 / 17.03.04

I usually avoid cat-themed mystery novels like smallpox, but I still have fond memories about the first four of Lilian Jackson Braun's *The Cat Who...* series, which I read when I was younger. The characters were well-developed and the different topics covered by the main journalist character were neat to explore. The four books are *The Cat Who Could Read Backwards*, *The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern*, *The Cat Who Turned On and Off*, and *The Cat Who Saw Red*.

She also wrote about 20+ others after these four, but I can't vouch for them as much ... the main character moves up north and the series becomes more about Northern Exposure-style quirky small town folks.

16:24 / 17.03.04

If detective fiction can be expanded to include police procedurals, there's the wonderful Bill James whose Harpur & Ives series may be more familiar to those of you in the UK (I think there was a TV show?), nobody in the US ever knows who I'm talking about. They seem lightweight but I find his portraiture quite good. 'Roses, Roses' is in the middle of the series and the best one, you might want to start a book or two before that. Most are funny, but with a pang.

Robert Janes has a series built around St-Cyr & Kohler, of the Surete & Gestapo respectively. Murders still occur, even in wartime, and Janes does a good job of handling the tensions between the two men without falling into a cliche 'uneasy alliance' tone. 'Sandman' is probably the best known.

Chester Himes writes about his two Harlem detectives, Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, who are grim and mostly unsympathetic, but his Harlem is vivid and bitterly funny. One of those books where you can really smell the city grime and feel that suffocating New York summer. I recommend 'Cotton Comes to Harlem' and 'Blind Man with a Pistol' -- his 'A Rage in Harlem' was made into an ok film.

Charles Willeford's Hoke Mosely is another unlikeable but intriguing cop, one of Willeford's later creations. His earlier stuff is pretty straightforward noir, some of it quite funny and not, you get the sense, unintentionally.

Patricia Highsmith's stuff often has the feel of mysteries or detective novels though they're not explicitly written as such.

I posted a few excerpts from James, Himes, & Willeford here if you care to sample them.

00:06 / 18.03.04

I'd recommend anything by Jack O'Connel.

14:35 / 18.03.04

Kee-rist, I completely forgot about Walter Moseley. His Easy Rawlins books are just genius. And if you feel like something non-detective but equally genius, then get 'Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned', a book which always makes me feel... well, not alone. Does that sound hokey?

01:10 / 24.04.04

Not so much detective as noir, but anything by Jim Thompson. Also Elmore Leonard, who deserves better films than the ones that have been made from his books thus far. And I second (third?) the Kinky Friedman rec.