Crime Fiction

When I discovered Raymond Chandler, along about the mid seventies, I was already a long time fan of private detective novels. In fact I remember talking in college about writing a "serious" detective novel. I'm embarrassed to admit, though, that I fell in love with the genre from reading Mickey Spillane in high school. A bit of luck, since I suspect that if it had been Spillane I'd read in the seventies, I'd have hated him. As it was tho, given the difference in my age when I read them, Mike Hammer and Philip Marlowe seemed like almost the same characters to me. And of course it's who Marlowe was that really makes Chandler Chandler.

The best, not in any order: Chandler, Greene, LeCarre. Next level: Hammett, both MacDonalds, Eric Ambler. Sorry, down on English mysteries at the moment.

The List

Chandler, Raymond, The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The Long Goodbye
Greene, Graham, The Ministry of Fear
LeCarre, John, The Smiley Trilogy (Tinker, Tailor; Honourable Schoolboy; Smiley's People); The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Simenon, Georges, any Maigret but peaked in forties and fifties.