Mystery Novels

[jazzbo]

No problem amigo. Not many people seem to know those A. A. Fair novels, but I think they're great. Funny, and clever.

[Ted O'Reilly]

Elmore Leonard's The Hot Kid, set in the 1930s, has Jay McShann as a passing-through character!

I've been cooling it a bit on some of the hard-bitten types lately, and have enjoyed the Andrea Camilleri "Inspector Montalbano" series from Italy. Excellent translations that capture the Sicilian-to-English slang especially well. Best to read in order, starting with The Shape of Water.

http://italian-mysteries.com/ACAap.html

[Don Brown]

I was as surprised as medjuck that before his post no one had mentioned Walter Mosley. Mosley is simply brilliant. I'd also recommend Mo Hayder, an English writer, whose novels are not for the faint of heart.

[Kalo]

Great suggestions so far, especially Ross MacDonald and Charles Willeford.

Greatest omission so far: anything by Ruth Rendell and her alter ego Barbara Vine. Superb stuff.

[Larry Kart]

Has anyone mentioned Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko novels? I was particularly gripped by "Red Square," "Havana Bay," and "Wolves Eat Dogs." Also, they are mysteries, in addition to everything else they are.

I do tend to lump together tough or hard-boiled crime fiction in which there's a significant element of suspense (hard to see how there couldn't be) and tough or hard-boiled mysteries, but they're not the same thing.

Also (sorry if I've mentioned it before) in the crime fiction bag, semi-psychopath division, Derek Marlowe's "The Vengeance Man," which is adjacent to Jim Thompson territory.

[Larry Kart]

How could I have forgotten Englishman Bill James' (pseudonym of James Tucker) Harpur and Iles novels?

"Colin Harpur is a Detective Chief Inspector and Desmond Iles is the Assistant Chief Constable in an unnamed coastal city in southwestern England. Harpur and Iles are complemented by an evolving cast of other recurring characters on both sides of the law. The books are characterized by a grim humor and a bleak view of the relationship between the public, the police force and the criminal element."

Grim humor doesn't begin to tell the story; also, the mordant, hostile banter between Harpur and Iles (who is in some moods close to insane) is at once baroque and drily hilarious, as are the forms of at once crude and would-be classy speech that are given to the often quite nasty local gangsters who figure so prominently in the books. A brilliant series for quite a while, though IMO it ran out of gas after "Lovely Mover," IIRC. Not sure why, but James' always high degree of stylization, especially of dialogue, suddenly stopped working for me -- perhaps there began to be too much of it in relation to events. BTW, Iles doesn't enter the picture until "Halo Parade," though the first two are excellent in their own right and lead right into Iles' eventual arrival.

* You'd Better Believe It, 1991

* The Lolita Man, 1991 (1986)

* Halo Parade, 1991 (1987)

* Protection (also available as Harpur & Iles), 1992 (1988)

* Come Clean, 1993

* Take, 1994

* Club, 1995

* Astride a Grave, 1996

* Gospel, 1997

* Roses, Roses, 1998

* In Good Hands, 2000

* The Detective is Dead, 2001 (1995)

* Top Banana, 1996

* Panicking Ralph, 2001

* Lovely Mover, 1999

* Eton Crop, 1999

* Kill Me, 2000

* Pay Days, 2001

* Naked at the Window, 2002

* The Girl with the Long Back, 2004 (2003)

* Easy Streets, 2005 (2004)

* Wolves of Memory, 2006

* Girls, 2007 (2006)

* Pix, (2007)

* In the Absence of Iles, (2008)

[Larry Kart]

Here's the first chapter of a non-Harpur and Iles from James, "Middleman," though it shares much of the flavor. Haven't read this one myself; need to look for it:

http://www.thedonotpress.com/extracts/middlemanex.html