Tony Block

I love crime fiction from the pulp fiction writers like Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Horace McCoy and other great noir writers of the post World War II era, to 50's writers like Charles Willeford, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Williams, Chester Himes and Ross Macdonald, up to modern crime writers like Martin Bedford, James Ellroy, Vicki Henricks, Andrew Vachss, Carl Hiaasen and Michael Dibdin,

Some great books that explore this sub-genre of the Novel are
Pulp Culture : Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War and
Neon Noir : Contemporary American Crime Fiction both by Woody Haut, and Hardboiled America : Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir by Geoffrey O'Brien.

Vintage Books' Black Lizard Series carries many of these authors' books and Serpent's Tail in London also has a fine selection of American and European crime writers influenced by Hammett, Cain, Chandler and Thompson.

Some great movies from film noir classics like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Dark Passage, to 50s classics like Kiss Me Deadly, Touch of Evil, Rear Window, Purple Noon, and modern noir including The Long Goodbye, The Grifters, The Getaway, The Talented Mr. Ripley, the American Friend, Cotton Comes to Harlem, have also been made from these great books.

Read James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), and then read The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942) and you can see the influence that hardboiled fiction had on Camus in particular, which he also acknowledges, and the Modern Novel in general.

What Are Your Favorite Crime Fiction Books and Which Writers Do You Like?

cheers, Tony Block

benedict

I am planning to start buying my dad a selection of selection of Chandler-esque fiction for Christmas and his birthday in January. In passing he said that he was interested in that kind of writing recently and I thought it would be fun to seek out a representative sample from the past six decades or so of "hardboiled" &/or noir writings.

The first couple of posts here will be a good starting point but any other insights would be appreciated! Budding reviewers should feel free to flesh them out with mini-reviews or reminiscences!

Bean-si

Well you've probably come to the right forum as you may notice the often-present Crime/Mystery bias.
I always recommend James Lee Burke and James Crumley (especially 'Dancing Bear').

devilpants

Tony: your list of writers is pretty much most of what I read. I recommend (if you haven't already read) The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction which has a lot of rare, hard-to-find short stories from all of the writers listed above (Willeford, Gorman, Goodis, Donald Westlake, etc.) I also recommend Paul Cain, Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming), and Harry Whittington.

The Exister

My favorite authors of this ilk:

David Goodis
Jim Thompson
Chester Himes

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammet is one of my favorite novels of this genre - great stuff.

Ugly Pete

Tony

I've read a lot of Hammet and Chandler but I just started my first Jim Thompson novel, The Alcoholics. Love the sleazy atmosphere of ths one. I'll be sure to check out some of the other authors you've mentioned.

Thanks, Pete

classwar

My Two Cents:

Eugene Izzi is one of my all time favorites. He unfortunately died a very violent and mysterious death a few years ago. I would recommend anything EXCEPT his last few books. He focuses primarily on his hometown of Chicago.

My current favorite is hands down George Pelecanos. D.C. focused, this guy is full of soul. I highly recommend King Suckerman and the Sweet Forever. Pelecanos is really into music and I dig reading all of his books and picking up on the music references. Besides that he deals head on with issues of race and class, and his books are just stunning to read.

Joe R. Lansdale is also pretty great. Most of his stuff takes place in Texas and the characters really keep things interesting- one is an old hippy trying to get his life together, his partner an african-american gay republican. It works though, and the books move along well and are filled with action.

happy reading-
Eddie Vanzetti

BoatDrinks

Cain was a genius, imho. I also love some Chandler and most Hammett.

Others who inspire me:
John D. MacDonald
Donald Westlake (when writing as Richard Stark)
Blake Edwards
Ross MacDonald (only up to 1962)
George V. Higgins
Evan Hunter (when writing as Ed McBain)
Elmore Leonard
Robert B. Parker (only up to 1992)
James Lee Burke
Michael Connelly
Lawrence Block
Jan Burke
George Pelecanos

and a new kid on the block: David Corbett

SiberianLlama

Hi, recently I've been meaning to try out some good old crime noir detective novels and was wondering what people recommend. At the moment, I am thinking about starting either a Raymond Chandler book or an James Elroy novel. Any recommendations or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

RandyM

For James Ellroy, I'd start with "Black Dahlia". If you like it, you could continue with the rest of his LA quartet (Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz). I loved all 4 of them. You don't need to read them in order, they just have some overlapping charachters which loosly ties all 4 books together.

benedict

SiberianLlama, I used your post to merge-bump a similarly-themed and informative thread that I keep meaning to refer [and possibly add] to! When I was looking into the matter myself I came across the following resources that I'll simply repost here without comment:

• NoirTexas
• Hardluck Stories
• Hardboiled Fiction
• Hardboiled Heaven
• "Hard-Boiled: Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines"

Way back when this thread was new, as well as digging up the above links, there were some usenet discussions I found on Google. They contained various recommendations and observations that I may summarise and post here later.

BoatDrinks

For Chandler The Long Goodbye is his best work, imho. I just reread it this year for the 5th or 6th time.

For Ellroy it's a no-brainer - LA Confidential

You're so lucky to have not read a Chandler novel yet!!!

SiberianLlama

Wow!

Thanks a lot Benedict for merging my thread with this other one. I can see from just browsing the posts that there's a lot of good info and recommendations in it. I'll have to go through and check out everything in detail.

BoatDrinks, thank you for the recommendations as well. I've been meaning to try out both Chandler and Ellroy for some time now. LA Confidential is one of my favorite movies and I remember being really excited when I learned that Ellroy continued the story in other novels. This is one homework assignment that I'm really excited to start on!

Thanks again!

gfoots

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books nicely mix the hard boiled genre with the cozy mystery genre. Wolfe is an excentirc genius detective who never leaves the house, but send his legman Archie Goodwin out to gather clues by any means neccessary.

Pretty light hearted quick reads, and the mysteries are never too original, but the relationship between the blustery Wolfe and his wisecracking assistant are priceless.

BoatDrinks

Sib,
If you have never read a Chandler novel then I would suggest starting with The Big Sleep as opposed to the The Long Good-bye.

While TLG is a better book, imho, it is much more of a "deep" read. It's complexed.

The Big Sleep on the other hand is just action, action, action.

It might be a better intro to Chandler.

benedict

They're now talking about making this into a TV show:
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/tv-talk/621...l#post12167849

On a side note, a mere decade on from thinking about it in my first post in this thread, I've recently set my dad on the road to reading John D. Macdonald's Travis McGee novels (he now has the first three + "The Last One Left", all of which he enjoyed immensely) and, this week, I sent him the first Amos Walker book by Loren D. Estleman.

Jory

I recommend Hammett, Chandler, Stark, and Leonard to anyone who will listen.

My absolute favorite crime novelist is Highsmith. The five Ripley books are a delight, and I'm quite fond of The Cry of the Owl and This Sweet Sickness as well.

Favorites? Hammett's Red Harvest, Highsmith's Ripley's Game, Stark's The Hunter.

Also, Doyle's The Valley of Fear may be the first hard-boiled crime story ever written. The first half is your typical Sherlock Holmes stuff, but the second half, the long flashback to America, reads like pure Hammett, 12 years before Hammett's first book. It tends to be marginalized by Holmes fans, but it may be my favorite of Doyle's four novels.

Lately I've been reading through the early Perry Mason novels, and they're much more hard-boiled than you'd expect if you only know the TV series, sort of like if Sam Spade were a lawyer.

Geofferson

^ Great suggestions guys. Loren Estleman is arguably one of the more underrated crime fiction authors in business today. In addition to the Walker series, his stand-alone's are fantastic. I picked up a quick stand-alone read of his a few months back called Peeper and it was a pure delight.

Also, Doyle's The Valley of Fear is now quite accessible (for the first time in a long while) as part of Hard Case Crime's line of books. Definitely worth a read.

On topic, I just started the Mathew Scudder books by Lawrence Block. Figure with all the attention these days on Connelly, Sandford, Crais, etc., figured it be a good idea I read one of the leading series that inspired those guys.