Last month we ran a series of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read – which of your all-time favourite crime novels did we miss?
The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham (1938)
Margery Allingham’s crime novels span the 1930s to 50s and can be rated alongside those of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. Her detective, Albert Campion, tall and thin, hides his intelligence behind horn-rimmed spectacles and an amiable expression of idiocy. The Fashion in Shrouds is set in London. Campion displays less vacuity than usual as his sister Valentine, a fashion designer, is involved in the plot involving a circle of couturiers, clients, models, aircraft designers and night-club owners. The emotional intensity of three murders and the teasing out of the plot are enlivened by Campion’s relationship to Amanda, his down-to-earth red-headed fiancée, and Lugg, his cockney ex-burglar valet.
Anne Fletcher, Ironbridge
The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham (1952)
Margery Allingham could write far better than Agatha Christie. A classic “atmospheric” novel set in postwar London where the fog of the city becomes one of the key ingredients, adding texture and background, The Tiger in the Smoke is about buried treasure and who will get to it first. The novel builds to an exciting climax, although it undoubtedly fails on the PC front, the baddies including an albino, a dwarf, a hunchback and so on.
Robin Percival, Derry, Northern Ireland
The Final Days by Alex Chance (2008)
A dangerous man has abducted a child in Utah and then taunts a completely unrelated psychologist in San Francisco (who has a daughter the same age) about the missing girl. The history of an extreme sect that once based itself in the Church of the Final Days comes to haunt a new generation, and the faith of some characters, such as the newly baptised chief of police in Canaan, Utah, is severely tested. There is enough violence to provide ongoing menace, but without being gratuitous.
The Rev Tony Bell, Chesterfield, Derbyshire
Night and the City by Gerald Kersh (1938)
Kersh’s London classic proves that an English author could write crime fiction in the 1930s every bit as hard-boiled as his American contemporaries – and without having to do a Raymond Chandler and hop across the Atlantic. Small-time Soho con and pimp Harry Fabian faces two problems. First, the police are cleaning up the streets in preparation for the coronation of George VI and Harry is in their sights. Second, he needs money, about £100 – not a huge sum, even in the 1930s, but enough to drag him ever deeper into the seedy underworld of the capital’s clip joints, jazz clubs and all-night cafés. A shocking read from a much-neglected writer.
Andrew McCallum, London
The Way Some People Die by Ross Macdonald (1951)
Ross Macdonald is the heir of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and probably better than either. He wrote incredibly complicated, almost baroque sagas of the twisted truths and corruption concealed at the heart of American families, with less emphasis on the character of the private eye (Lew Archer) and more on those of the people he encounters in the course of his investigations.
Richard Harman, Brixen, Italy
The Underground Man by Ross Macdonald (1971)
I recently unpacked a box of books by Ross Macdonald, whose works the screenwriter William Goldman described as “the finest detective novels ever written by an American”. Macdonald’s landscape is the deserts, forests, beaches and canyons of California, whose flawed, alienated suburbanites he dissects as incisively as Richard Yates. The Underground Man is representative of his later interests (psychology and sociology) and concerns (dysfunctional families, environmentalism). Wearied and appalled by his discoveries, Archer – Macdonald’s PI – must pursue the truth and save a kidnapped boy. The Underground Man is romantic and finally hopeful – though, as the author sourly remarks elsewhere: “There was nothing wrong with southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.”
Ralph Willett, Sherborne
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
Watchmen is so many things at once: detective story (who murdered the Comedian?), history of the comic superhero (Golden Age and Silver Age), meditations on power and time and justice, love story – the list goes on and on for one of the most imaginative graphic novels ever written. Released initially as a 12-issue comic book, Watchmen coheres as an idea-packed work of art, full of memorable characters – you’ll never forget the omnipotent and tragic Doctor Manhattan.
Holly McGuire, Chicago, IL, USA
True Grit by Charles Portis (1968)
How can you leave out the story of Mattie Ross avenging her father’s blood over in the Choctaw Nation when the snow was on the ground? True Grit has the toughest 14-year-old in literature. She, certainly, wouldn’t be impressed at being overlooked, but her opinion of newspapers was low anyway: “The paper editors are great ones for reaping where they have not sown.”
Sam Costello, Melbourne, Australia
I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond (1990)
Set in the flyblown hinterlands and sex clubs of Thatcher’s London, I Was Dora Suarez features an unnamed protagonist (a semi-alcoholic veteran in the Met’s special – and fictional – “Factory” division) on the trail of a uniquely vicious killer. Poverty, prostitution and Aids are intrinsic to this world, but such obvious causes of misery are mirrored by an intensive critique of monetarist self-interest and irresponsibility. Like the 80s noir of Dennis Potter, or James Ellroy and David Peace, Raymond’s fiction takes crime as the premise for existential pessimism, and refuses its readers the triumphal pay-offs of the traditional detective story.
Joe Kennedy, Budapest
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Full article and photo: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/20/1000-crime-novels-recommended
