Classics in the Key of See

 

Name crime fiction classics/authors you think everybody should read.

 

This is the type of question I know invites regret. I’ll couch my response with one caveat and one suggestion. The caveat here is that, while literary taste is not static, I discuss titles here that I return to again and again, albeit for different reasons. The suggestion is to decide for yourself whether to visit them as a writer, as a reader, or both.

 

It’s impossible not to acknowledge the Trinity of Crime Fiction: Cain, Chandler, and Christie. I mean no disrespect to Hammett, since I was going for alliteration and I view Hammett as the darker side of the coin of the same PI tropes found in Chandler. Put another way: think of Hammett as being to Hemingway as Chandler is to F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s also important to read those two writers to become aware of the dangers of influence. Chandler’s similes when they were good, they were a chef’s kiss, but when they were overdone, they reeked like a dead banana. Likewise, Hammett—to paraphrase Faulkner on Hem— won’t use words that will send you to the dictionary.

 

Oh, and speaking of Fitzgerald, I might be one of those weirdos who read The Great Gatsby as a mystery. Who killed Gatsby? Who killed Myrtle Wilson? The image of Gatsby dead in his swimming pool reminds me of the dead Joe Gillis in the movie Sunset Boulevard.

 

Christie has sold almost as many books as God.  Not blasphemy—only the Bible outsells the Dame. I cut my teeth on her mysteries, binging through them, at the behest of a teacher. I suggest reading And Then There Were None and contrasting it with Yukito Ayatsuji’s The Decagon House Murders.

 

James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity is a masterclass in concise prose, pacing, and pitch-perfect dialogue. It foreshadows George V. Higgins and his The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and almost all of Elmore Leonard.

 

There have been trends in crime fiction. I’m not a fan of the serial killer or vigilante genres, but I do recommend Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs because it offers creepy characterization, in the same way Patricia Highsmith paints in Ripley’s sociopathy one stroke at a time.

 

There are the supernovae that can’t be avoided: the first of the firsts. Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series; Chester Himes’s Harlem series; Eleanor Taylor Bland; Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski; and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Both Michael Nava’s Henry Rios series and Joseph Hansen’s Brandstetter mysteries present the gay male as a protagonist and not as criminals.

 

If you want to read Los Angeles as a survey of city and crime then read in order: Chandler, Ellroy, and Hansen.

 

Let’s hear it for humor, which I find difficult to write well. Check out Charles Willeford and Carl Hiaasen.

 

For fans who like what I call the Crossover, that mix of mystery with splashes of any or all of the above: horror, history, and romance.

 

A.S. Byatt’s Possession.

Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind.

Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose.

 

Perhaps next time, I’ll offer a list of mysteries in translation, which are worth reading for their different cultural attitudes and legal systems.