Crime/detective fiction -- Your picks

[inva]

Bit of a bump, this, but it saves creating a new thread.

I recently read a thing called Bloody January, by Alan Parks set in early 70s Glasgow.

It will inevitably garner comparisons with Rebus, but Harry McCoy, Parks' anti-hero copper is deeply damaged in a way that Rebus never was.

Anyway, this is a page-turner that delivers the goods in full. I won't say too much about the plot, except to say that the author was obviously thinking of both the Jimmy Savile case and the Profumo affair.

This guy is one to watch - I'd get in on the ground floor if I was you.

Sounds a bit like McIlvanney's Laidlaw also. You might like his books if you don't already know them.

 

[Idris2002]

Sounds a bit like McIlvanney's Laidlaw also. You might like his books if you don't already know them.

I don't know them, but it does sound like I would like them. . . they must be a major influence on this Alan Parks, if the Laidlaw wiki page is any guide.

 

[Serge Forward]

Walter Mosley, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Reginald Hill, Elmore Leonard, George P Pelecanos, James Elroy, Ross MacDonald, James Lee Burke, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stuart MacBryde... etc...

 

[Pickman's model]

georges simenon
edgar allen poe
e.w. hornung

 

[campanula]

Michael Dibdin

 

[Jon-of-arc]

The book Layer Cake (that the movie was based on) and it's sequel Viva la Madness are both well worth your time. The first one is pretty close in terms of plot to the movie, but with enough differences to keep it interesting. But the protagonist's description of London crime circles goes into much more detail and is very entertaining. The sequel is pretty much more of the same - a ludicrously entertaining caper, with a prefty expertly weaved plot that goes all over the place and comes together pretty nicely in the end.

 

[Serge Forward]

Didier Daenickx

 

[tim]

The Martin Beck books by Wahlöö and Sjöwall are about as good as 1960s Swedish Marxist detective fiction gets.

Martin Beck - Wikipedia

 

[tim]

Some of the British Library reprints of mid-twentieth Century crime fiction are good. Somebody At the Door which involves murder in sleazy amongst sleazy wartime suburbanites is fun. He was the father of the Bagpuss creator Oliver Postgate.

The colour of Murder which is in the same series is also enjoyable, particularly if you know Clapham and the Wandsworth Road class divide.

Crime classics - The British Library Shop

 

[belboid]

The omission of Patricia Highsmith from this thread so far is shocking! Absolutely stupendous writer, and not only the Ripley's and Hitchcock's. Simply wonderful.

Name of the Rose should also get a mention. And An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears. Four contradictory versions of the same/a continuing story set just after the civil war. I really should read some other stuff by him.

 

[redsquirrel]

Neither Edmund Crispin nor Gladys Mitchell mentioned so far which is also inexcusable. Both rather strange but all the better for it.

I really should read some other stuff by him.

TBH while it's perfectly readable none of his other stuff comes even close to An Instance of the Fingerpost.

 

[colbhoy]

Robert Crais and his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series is excellent. I also recommend Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard and McIlvanny's Laidlaw series.

And for a bit of Scandi-fiction, Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series.

 

[belboid]

TBH while it's perfectly readable none of his other stuff comes even close to An Instance of the Fingerpost.

That's a shame, it would be hard to match AIotF's brilliance though.

 

[rubbershoes]

Anyone else read any Harry Bingham books?

 

[Serge Forward]

Chester Himes.

 

[LeytonCatLady]

Joseph Wambaugh - Choirboys
Irvine Welsh - Filth
Jonathan Kellerman - A Cold Heart
Colin Bateman - Driving Big Davie
Ben Elton - High Society
Dan Brown - Digital Fortress
James Patterson - 1st to Die

 

[felixthecat]

Name of the Rose should also get a mention..

That's one that's in my top 10 reads. Not just detective fiction, fiction in general. A bloody great book

 

[Idris2002]

Bit of a bump, this, but it saves creating a new thread.

I recently read a thing called Bloody January, by Alan Parks set in early 70s Glasgow.

It will inevitably garner comparisons with Rebus, but Harry McCoy, Parks' anti-hero copper is deeply damaged in a way that Rebus never was.

Anyway, this is a page-turner that delivers the goods in full. I won't say too much about the plot, except to say that the author was obviously thinking of both the Jimmy Savile case and the Profumo affair.

This guy is one to watch - I'd get in on the ground floor if I was you.

Just posting here to say that I recently read the second of these Alan Parks books, (February's Son) and it's every bit as good as the first.

Get in on the ground floor, like I said

If you want a longer series, any of the crime series listed here sound good:

The Binge-Read: 10 Iconic Crime Fiction Series of the 1960s

This is the first installment of a multi-part series designed to introduce readers (or remind those already familiar) with the essential long-running series for each decade of the later 20th and ea…

crimereads.com