Murder mostly foul

[callmemadam]

Saturday’s Telegraph Review had a list of Fifty Crime Writers to Read before you Die as they rather sinisterly put it. Pleased to see my favourites Sayers and Allingham so highly rated and P D James left out. I’ve read very few of these authors and am slightly ashamed that I’ve never read any Raymond Chandler. I’d like to add another writer to the list: Susan Hill. I haven’t read many of her books but after reading The Pure in Heart, her second Simon Serrailler novel, I was hooked on the series. The books are set in middle England, the characters are interesting, the author’s social commentary wise. What grabs me about them is that I have never read any crime fiction which is so victim-centred. The reader is left in no doubt that murder is an evil crime with far reaching consequences for all whom it touches. Very different from the high-body-count, solve-the-puzzle fiction which can be very enjoyable but is much less engaging. I found myself lying awake at night thinking about the events in these books: you have been warned.

Comments

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Seems a bit odd to include Walter Mosley and leave out Chester Himes. I'd have included Ian Rankin.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Never read any of 'em! I must try Ian Rankin. I have enjoyed some of the older writers listed, like Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin. I don't like Agatha Christie and have never got on with Maigret.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Mosley is a modern African-American crime writer - the Easy Rawlins books are set in the 1950s. Himes was the real deal; an African-American who was in prison in the 1930s then started writing crime fiction. He later settled in France, where he was critically acclaimed. (A non-crime novel of his, If He Hollers, shows communist sympathies which, along with being African-American, can't have made life easy for him in the US.)

Mosley can be a bit polemical for my liking, because he's looking back at a more racist time. Himes doesn't hide it, but he's much more 'this is how it is' about it.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that's online - Howard took his copy away before I had a chance to read it!

[pinkhebe.livejournal.com]

We read 'Strange Journey' by Susan Hill for GCSE, and, I'm sorry to say, it put me completely off. That said, my English Teacher did very little when it came to encouraging a love of anything. It's a good thing I was a bookworm anyhow.
~x~

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

'Strange Meeting'? I had exactly that experience - I've never fancied trying any of her others since, and usually I love novels set in the First World War.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Never read Strange Meeting, so can't say. I've mostly read Susan Hill's non fiction, like The Magic Apple Tree. I have a copy of The Woman in Black but I'm scared to read it.

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

The Magic Apple Tree is one of my favourite comfort reads. I like the Serrailler books too, although I took a while to get over the shock ending of the 1st.
I think of myself as a bit of a crime fan (in the literary sense)and was shocked at how many of the top 50 authors I hadn't come across.
Do you like Reginald Hill?

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

We're in the same boat (as so often). Reginald Hill? Never read but if you like him I probably will. :-)