Ten Best Detective Novels

Currently reading:
The Scent of Blood
by Raymond Miller
Genre: Crime
Date started: September 18
Reason: Cover blurb by Lee Child

Waiting:
The 47th Samurai
by Stephen Hunter

The following list is lifted from Crime Fiction Dossier. I like the concept although my list would vary some from it.

10 Greatest Detective Novels (in alphabetical order):

• Lawrence Block - When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
• Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye
  
• Michael Connelly - The Black Echo
• Robert Crais - L.A. Requium
• James Crumley - The Last Good Kiss
• Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
• John D. MacDonald -- The Dreadful Lemon Sky
• Walter Mosley - The Devil in A Blue Dress
• Robert B. Parker - Looking for Rachel Waller
• Rex Stout - The League of Frightened Men

The list is going to drive me back into the dusty lairs to locate the Chandler, Hammett, and the Stout. All the rest I am conversant with and would rank highly but if I read the three older titles I don't remember it so I will do my homework and take a look at them.

There is an interesting conversation associated with the original post that expands and confirms the list, check it out. Some readers criticized the list for excluding women and mention Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Cristie. How does the list strike you? Did they miss any that you would like to see on the list? Let me know. I like Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins but I don't think he rates the 10 Best list, what about one of Stuart Kaminsky's detectives like Lieberman or Rostnikov? And what about Dana Stabenow, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, or James Lee Burke? Not to mention Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko and Ed McBain's 87th Precinct. And if the list is going to be inclusive I would have to go with Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, I mean gimme a break.

They say Poe created the genre with Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) but Holmes breathed life into it from 1887 until 1930 and deserves top billing.

At our Friends of the Library book sale a couple of weeks ago I picked up a 10 cent bargain, 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes by Vincent Starrett, which reminded me of his poem:

221B

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

– Vincent Starrett

For me 10 won't work, I could maybe work with the 25 best, but the 50 best would be even better.