Crime Beat

One of the requests from participants at the Schlock Horror lectures during UCT’s Summer School two weeks back was for a list of hot shot crime novels and novelists. So here’s a list of sorts compiled by Joe Muller with some minor input from me. Below the list are links to some websites which are always interesting guides to current krimi fashions. And if you still want more click on the Top Ten Krimi button to the left of the Crime Beat blog. There you’ll find the top reads of almost all the local crime novelists. And that should be enough reading to last a lifetime.

Some suggestions

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Stick by Elmore Leonard
The Steam Pig by James McClure
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake
On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
The Killing of the Tinkers by Ken Bruen
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins
Down by the River where the Dead Men Go by George P Pelecanos

As well as all their other books, and in no particular order, anything by Vicki Hendricks, Don Winslow, Philip Kerr, Michael Dibdin, Nicolas Freeling, Richard Price, Robert Ferrigno, Julie Parsons, James Crumley, Daniel Woodrell, James Sallis, S.J. Sansom, James Ellroy, Louise Welsh, Ian Rankin, Donna Leon, Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Indridason, Johan Theorin, Karin Fossum, Peter Temple, Val McDermid, Edward Bunker, Jo Nesbo, the list goes on…

And then here are some website:

Top-100 Crime Novels of all Time
50 Crime Writers to read before you die
Murder They Write: 100 Masters of Crime