Name crime-fiction classics/authors you think everybody should read.
I will, I will. But first I'm going to name six crime-fiction authors I've never read. It's good for the soul. Ahem. I have never read a single word of:
- Edgar Alan Poe (unless we read a short story at school and I've forgotten)
- Dashiel Hammett
- Wilkie Collins
- Patricia Highsmith
- Georges Simenon
- Rex Stout (in fact, for a long time I wasn't sure if he was the author or the character)
Right then. I think - although given what I've just revealed, who cares what I think - everyone should read:
1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and The ABC Murders (1936), by Agatha Christie.
They're both rattling good yarns, so no one's ever going to be sorry, but there's another reason too, for budding crime writers [SPOILER ALERT]: one is a masterclass - and possibly the first example of - the faux-serial-killer plot; the other is a masterclass - and almost definitely the first example of - the unreliable narrator.
These two tropes are still being used today, and so they should be. (If you don't want to play the game, write something else!) But no one wants to be the new crime writer who gives their genius plot a drumroll, believing they made it up, because they've never read the Dame.
(Pause to fret that my new book might be an innocent rip-off of a Rex Stout . . .)
2. The Tiger in the Smoke (1952), Margery Allingham.
Okay, the plot is bonkers (an Allingham speciality that reaches its zenith in The Beckoning Lady) but the atmosphere is immersive and unsettling, the pace is impeccable and the range of characters is joyous: there's a criminal gang with a leadership struggle going on; a war hero who might not have died in battle after all; a lone figure standing in the face of evil; a loan shark straight out of Dickens. And there's London. This of all Allingham's books is a love letter to London, in all its grubby, grasping, foggy glory.
3. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), by John Le Carre.
Speaking of grubby fog . . . I swithered back and forth between this and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold but I've only read that once, whereas I could be persuaded to re-read Tinker... on any given day. George Smiley - possibly the most ironically-named character in literature - is disappointed, morose, disillusioned (if he was ever illusioned), but not quite cynical as he trudges through the dregs of post-WWII peace into the Cold War. Is he the first of those broken men who still do good, as he sees it? Could be. Certainly he's the father of the slow horses in Mick Herron's books. And, for me, he's the antidote to James Bond. If I was on a first date and I found out the guy thought more highly of Bond than of Smiley, I'd be out of there as if he'd just snapped at the server.
This isn't relevant but I think it's funny. On a panel one time, we were musing about whether there could be a cozy version of any crime-fiction sub-genre. We didn't come to a decision, but it was agreed that a cozy spy thriller needed to be called Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Fudge.
4. A Dark-Adapted Eye, (1986) Ruth Rendell writing as Barabara Vine.
Was this the book that started psychological thrillers? Not even close. Even Rendell herself had been climbing inside desperate people and watching as their obsessions break them for ages by the time she branched out as Vine. (Make Death Love Me, from 1979, is still worth a read.) But it's impossble to deny that she knew she was doing something different again with this one. She made no attempt to hide the fact that Vine was Rendell, for one thing, so why the pseudonym? I think there's an argument to be made (and struck down, by all means) that this book was the beginning of domestic noir. The Vine books are about families and secrets and shame. A Dark-Adapted Eye was certainly the first time I, as a reader, came across that grimly claustrophobic world of dependence and dysfunction where I so love to be.
5. That Affair Next Door, (1897) Anna Katherine Green
The Leavenworth Case (1878) is Green's most famous novel (although not famous enough when you consider that date and reflect on the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle's first Holmes story was published in 1886. I'm. Just. Sayin'). But I picked That Affair ... because in it, we get an introduction to a very familiar character: Miss Amelia Butterworth, a single lady of a certain age, whose nosiness is rewarded when her neighbour gets murdered. The police are called in, of course, but does Miss Butterworth leave it to them? Pfft.
Also, That Affair ... is the first of the Library of Congress classic crime re-issues, which gives me an excuse to share the photo I took there last Friday.
6. The Tragedie of Macbeth, (c.1606) William Shakespeare
Don't you hate it when people are talking about crime fiction and they bring up Shakespeare or Dickens or episodes of Seinfeld? Sorry, but in this case it's undeniable. It's ripped from the headlines, or at least from a recently published account of true events, if Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587) count as recent. And back then, I think they would have. It's got a murder that causes more murders as the plan falls apart - a crime plot that's still with us. It's noir to the bone - no happy endings for anyone. And if I had tried to say Ruth Rendell invented the psychological thriller, I'd have to go back and delete it now, because come on! Ambition that leads to corruption that leads to paranoia that leads to psychosis that leads to destruction, all in a seething cauldron of love, betrayal and bitterness with no escape? Chef's kiss, no?
I realise that all I've done is argue that Macbeth is crime fiction, rather than explain why anyone should read - or ideally see - it. So here goes. If someone who's been nominated for an Edgar but never read Poe has any standing at all, I put it to you that everyone should see some Shakespeare. And Macbeth is . . . wait for it . . . short.
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