KK sent out the following, in this morning's email:
Graves in Academe, by Susan Kenny, a thriller that Maura lent me, is about a college literature professor, female of course, who uses literature clues to solve a series of murders and other crimes that take place on the campus of her new University posting. (Do you think colleges are the most dangerous places around?)
In an aside she muses at one place; "That was the beauty of literature, of the written word; it existed, created a world elsewhere, another country that one could enter freely and at will."
Oh well, back to The X Bar X Boys at Devil's Canyon...
This reminded me . . .
I was just thinking, a couple of nights ago, that I have gotten tired of most mysteries, at least, the ones readily available as mass-market paperbacks.
The writing is often well-nigh unbearable, and even if the plot seems like something I'd like to follow, the prose puts me off to the degree that I hurl the book across the room.
I started fretting that the only modern mysteries with any literary merit, or at least, without literary demerits, are those set on college campuses or in English drawing rooms.
Now that Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald are done, I wondered, am I doomed to the ivory tower for my light reading, condemned to an endless diet of tea and crumpets?
Fortunately, I thought of Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, John Sandford, and Andrew Vachss. And if there are these four, there must be many more good ones.
Send in your favorites. Thanks!
5 comments:
In many ways, mysteries are the best writing around. The best are long on plot and character (to the bane of the post-modernist). Some of my favorites are:
Val McDermid -- gory and character rich.
Minette Walters -- slightly less gory; great characters and plots.
Elizabeth George and P.D. James -- rich on character. Especially their earlier novels in which plot development matters as much as their characters' development.
I've read really good books by:
Charles Todd, T. Jefferson Parker, Laurie R. King (I like her books that aren't part of the Mary Russell series)
Don't know VM or CT and never read PDJ, TJP, or LRK. Thanks for the recommendations.
Minette Walters is good, I agree
I read your relevant blog. HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY NOT INCLUDE THE PATRICK O'BRIAN OF MYSTERY WRITERS IN YOUR LIST? I refer of course to Tony Hillerman.
And later . . .
Also, how could you possibly not list Elmore Leanord? Maybe more adventure than mystery I guess...But a WRITER.
I said back (via email) that Elmore Leonard rocks, no doubt about that.
Tony Hillerman? I liked his first few. Then they started seeming like the same story over and over again.
I'll never forget one TH scene, though. It seems the Navajos on the res were watching a movie, about Geronimo or some other Apache, and the movie people had hired a bunch of Navajos to play the part of the Apaches. They were speaking "indian" to the palefaces, and the movie-watching crowd in TH's book was laughing like crazy.
Apparently, the Navajos were telling the whiteys, in the movie, with very straight faces, about the size of their members. The subtitles did not completely jibe.
As far as Elmore Leonard goes his first 6 books were great and some of my favorite mysteries or police novels whatever you want to call them. But the last ten or so have disappointed me. He's gotten into just writing freakier and freakier characters with very little plot.
I like Amanda Cross because hers are literate and I often have to look up a handful of new words. Her portrayal of men is a little off kilter and there haven't been any men like that except in the movies around the 1930s. But you learn something about literature in almost all of them which is kind of like reading Hillerman for the info on Indians.
I like M.C. Beaton for the Hamish MacBeth series, but don't care as much for the Agatha Raisin series. These are sweet little mysteries in the quaint Scottish village of Lochdub, but the characterization is excellent.
"M. C." btw is "Marion Chesney" a female writer and she's great at drawing catty females.
For hard boiled stuff in gritty New York you can't beat Lawrence Block in the Matt Scudder series. Matt is an alcholic ex-cop who accidentally shot a young girl on duty and had to give up police work. Now he does "favors" for friends looking into various crimes as an unlicensed sort of Private Investigator. Sort of in the Sam Spade tradition.
I like Walter Moseley. African American writer who writes about black Los Angeles in the 1940s. His best by far was the first one called: "The Girl in the Blue Dress" None of the subsequent ones have lived up to that first one, but still pretty good.
Post a Comment