10 Books Every Crime Writer Needs to Read, or a Quick Guide to Hard Boiled, by Josh Stallings

Q: We keep writing new books, but there are so many classics out there. What are the crime fiction classics you think every writer should read?

A: The longer I’m on this planet, the less I get what is and isn’t a classic. Dylan enjoys listening to Classic Rock when we’re driving, I do too. My problem is, when they play a band from 2014. I think Classic? Really. A classic car show featured a DeLorean. The Go-Go’s are a staple of classic rock radio. I love the Go-Go’s, but their music is only two years older than my favorite coke filled douchemobile. Can they both be classics, or is the term “classic” flexible, meaning  a certain age, that changes with what you’re referring to? Or is it a value judgement, i.e. Classic is what I like, what I believe will stand the test of time.

I’ll go with ten foundational novels that helped me discover or improve my love of crime fiction. To do this, I’ll break them down like a Venn diagram into sub-genres that all overlap in the larger genre of crime fiction. 

Hard-boiled

Here’s a quote that captures the hard-boiled point of view; 

“I see the world through jaded eyes covered by rose colored glasses.”— All the Wild Children by Josh Stallings.

Here are four foundational hard-boiled novels:

#1 The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler, is where I discovered hard-boiled. Witty and tough. Philip Marlow was the original knight in tarnished armor. Chandler cares more about character than buttoning up every plot point. If you love puzzle mysteries, he might drive you mad.

#2 Cotton Comes to Harlem, by Chester Himes. I could have picked any of the "Grave Digger" Jones and "Coffin Ed" Johnson books, but this is the first one I read, so it remains my favorite. The names Himes gave his detectives are two of the best character names in crime fiction. Because they are police, this also fits into Police Procedural. Himes' exploration of racism and black on black crime could label this as Social Commentary. But its tone is pure hard-boiled.

#3 Devil in a Red Dress, by Walter Mosley. First of the long running Easy Rawlins series. Easy is a school janitor and amateur detective. He also collects emotionally lost kids and builds a family over the series. They are quintessential LA novels, set in Watts over multiple decades. He shows us an LA Chandler never saw. 

#4 Dancing Bear, by James Crumley, could’ve been Hunter S Thompson and Raymond Chandler’s booze soaked collaboration. Yes, it has sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Brilliant similes describe a painfully harsh but romantic world view. Dancing Bear is the best hard-boiled novel ever written. It says the world is a rotten and mean place, but it is still worth saving. Reading it as a young thuggish man, I thought even I, with all my flaws and scars, could be the one to save someone or something.

Country Noir

#5 Tomato Red, by Daniel Woodrell. Fuck J.D. Vance and his condescending Hillbilly Elegy. If you want to read about hard scrabble hill folk from a writer that knows and more importantly loves them, read Daniel Woodrell. Winter’s Bone is equally fine. Hell any Woodrell is great reading. Tomato Red just grabbed me harder than the rest. 

#6 No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. My Love affair with McCarthy started with the border trilogy, amazing books. But No Country sticks in my mind like a fishhook.

Latin American Hard-Boiled 

#7 An Easy Thing, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. This is the first in the Héctor Belascoarán Shayne detective series. Actually it is the second, but Días de Combate has not been translated into English. Which is a bloody shame. Taibo reads like stream-of-consciousness word jazz. He plays out in the realm of absurdists and surrealists while adhering to the hard-boiled genre close enough to keep my heart pumping a staccato rhythm.

#8 Death in the Andes, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Magical realism kicks hard-boiled in the nuts. Hard-boiled goes down to one knee but comes back swinging. Mario Vargas Llosa is a Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author. After finishing Death in the Andes I flew through most of his English translated books.

#9 Dark Echoes of the Past, by Ramón Díaz Eterovic. Chilean P.I. Heredia investigates a murder with links back to political prisoners held, tortured, and disappeared during the time of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Eterovic mixes wry humor with horror and heartbreak delivering one stunning cocktail.

Epic Crime Fiction

Mario Puzo’s The Godfather books should dominate this sub-genre. But I’m not sure I ever read them. I saw the films enough times to think I read them. Fifth grade, a kid stole a copy of Godfather from his parents and read to me and three other boys, the sex scene from the wedding. Wow. That’s all I remember, wow. So as my foundational work, let me present:

#10 Cartel trilogy by Don Winslow. Power of the Dog was published in 2005, Cartel in 2015, and The Border in 2019. By any standard, does that make it a classic trilogy? Hell yes, by my standard. Fanatically researched, it tells the tale of the growth of the Mexican cartels from multiple POVs, DEA agents, cartel members, Irish hitmen, Mexican journalists, doctors. Readers gain a deep view of the war on drugs being fought on the Mexican border. It is also one of the finest examples of multi story line novels I have ever read. I’m following Callan, a young Irish hit-man, and just when I’m wondering what happed to Adán Barrera’s story line, it arrives. It is as violent and hard as the world it’s set in. Never gratuitous, it is nuanced, and willing to challenge the readers’ ideas of the border. Just stunning, must read for writers and readers alike. 

I’ll leave you with this quote:

“The central question of crime fiction is how do you live decently in an indecent world.”

— Don Winslow 

What am I reading today:

Finished, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People, by Nemonte Nenquimo, Mitch Anderson. Nemonte Nenquimo Indigenous activist, author and leader of the Waorani Nation in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin. How she got from a jungle girl who wanted to be white like the missionary’s daughter to a powerful force uniting multiple indigenous factions in a battle against big oil’s destruction of their homes is miraculous. And a damn fine read.

Still reading, Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner. If you aren’t reading Kushner, get to it.