(originally compiled in the 1980s and not
consistently updated since then; started adding Links Sept 1996 -- go to the
bottom of this page for my comments about this web site)
There are some thumbnail reviews of many of the books on
this list--click:
(Highlighted names have a Web Page; click to see. It's hard to keep this up to date since web sites come and go. Several links were removed just because they vanished. [last checked Feb 2001])
Some of these are technically not 'mysteries', but Hell,
it's MY list. Where there are multiple choices for an author, I
couldn't make up my mind which was the best. (And, yes, I know John
Dickson Carr is also Carter Dickson.)
Note: David Guterson's SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS is not a
mystery novel, but it is wonderful and deserves a mention on this page.
(There are no more slots open; some 'new' authors since about
1990 should qualify -- such as Derek Raymond, Michael Dibden, etc.
Others, like SS van Dine, should probably be dropped. But E-mail on the
whole content of this list is welcome, since it is idiosyncratic. I am open
to any suggestions, although I'm not convinced, like some people, that
nobody has written a decent mystery since the 'Golden Age'.)
Somebody pointed out that there are more than 50 books here and that
this is really a list of AUTHORS. Well, I will stick with my titles.
However, there should also be a secondary list of great detective story
writers that deserve mention even though Grobius can't come up with book titles
that qualify as 'best'.
I have constructed a list of mini-reviews from the Top 50 list; the premise
is based on the BBC radio show 'Desert Island Discs', where celebrities are
briefly interviewed and then asked what records they would select if they were
to be stranded on a desert island (with a record player of course)--then some of
their selections are played, simple but really neat show and beats Oprah hands
down. Click on Desert Island Mysteries.
January 1997. This page became too large; the next section, about sub-genres
and 'one-of-a-kind' mysteries is now on its own web page. Click on the skull
to view it.
Ed McBain. How could I skip the whole excellent 87th precinct series?
... him again. The Matthew Hope series
Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason, of course (these are
really quite good, the hell with the TV series)
John D. MacDonald. Travis McGee, gee whiz
John Mortimer.
Rumpole of the Bailey...best series of stories
since Sherlock Holmes (Leo McKern defines the role definitively,
just as Rathbone did SH until Jeremy Brett came along)
Dorothy L. Sayers. This is probably the only 'best' list that
doesn't have The Nine Tailors on it, but I can't stand Wimsey. (another link)
Ross MacDonald. The heir to Chandler, but just didn't make it
for some reason
Ruth Rendell. The Inspector Wexford series is excellent, but no single book stands out
above all the others
P.D. James. Writes some good books, but she reminds me of
Margaret Thatcher (from her PBS interviews), so naah!
La Femmes (Muller, Paretsky, Grafton, Barnes, et al).
These are very good writers about women PI's (but sometimes lapse
into sentimentality, and who gives a damn about McCone's love life?)
[I've gotten flak for this, but it is a generalization that still holds
for me. However, see other places on this web site for some revisionism.]
Sharon McCrumb.She Walks These Hills and some others really
belong on the main list, but she also perpetrated Bimbos of the
Death Sun -- I've got to think about this. Great writer, sometimes [March 97, she
has now been promoted into the top 50, because of her Tennessee Mountain Series]
Caroline Graham. Very witty, watch out for her books!
Sarah Caudwell. Fantastic! (and VERY infrequent)
Nicholas Freeling. He killed off his main detective, which
was unforgiveable; besides, his books are depressing
Sjöwall and Wahlöö. Wonderful Swedish detective series
Allingham, Tey, and Marsh Couldn't really get into them, but
of course there were some really good ones.
James Ellroy (Killer on the Road), as representative of the psycho casual killer
genre; I don't like this sort of book, even when it is as well done as this one, but it DID make Joe
Lofgreen's favorites list so I gave it a try.
Misc. Good Mystery Story Writers (who will not be offended
being left off my Top 50 list because they are dead):
Freeman Wills Crofts, Julian Symons, Robert Van Gulik,
G.K. Chesterton, Lillian de la Torre, Nicholas Blake (C. Day Lewis),
Anthony Boucher, Sax Rohmer
(yes,
Fu Manchu), Edgar Wallace,
Christianna Brand, Patricia Highsmith, Israel Zangwill
(and there are many others, but they don't occur to me right now)
Mortal Consequences by Julian Symons is the best history
of the Mystery story (in my opinion); there is also Howard Haycraft's
Murder for Pleasure -- great Golden Age compendium. Read Bill
Pronzini's wonderful Gun in Cheek books for a discussion of the Pulps.
A Catalogue of Crime by Barzun and Taylor is a comprehensive but
outdated and eccentric list of old mysteries.
Patrick O'Brian. Oops, wrong page. I haven't even begun to
search the Internet on this subject (Aubrey, Hornblower et al --
Napoleonic Era sea stories)
Martha Grimes [collects odd pub names on her vacations to Britain
then tries to make a story out of it; would be OK without her ridiculous
Melrose Plant character -- the un-lord Peter Wimsey -- who is appalling]
Elizabeth George [correspondents have disagreed with me on her, and
I disagree with myself sometimes, because these are 'good reads' -- but
there's something fake about them that is hard to pin down, maybe because
she is a Californian and her early books were soap operas with her idealized
British aristocrats -- Inspector Tommy Lynley (8th Earl of Asherton), Lady
Helen Clyde, Simon St. James -- give me a break! Later books have improved, but
I guess she's stuck with her cast of regulars, as Sayers was with Wimsey]
P.D. James [well, not always, but Dalgliesh is a jerk; got to admit
the books are well-written in many ways, though not style-wise. PDJ has a mouth
like a cat's asshole, judging by her appearances on PBS, but of course it would
be misleading to sum up a writer based on physical presence!]
A bunch from the early days: Such as Bentley -- why would
anyone rate Trent's Last Case as a perfect mystery classic?
It is almost unreadable. [Critics loved this book because it had ambiguous
conclusions by the detective, who was supposed to be omniscient at that
time--well, Hammett and company hadn't arrived yet. A landmark mystery deservedly
buried deep in the foundations not to be seen again.]
Poe's Auguste Dupin [heresy!] -- granted, he set the stage
for everything that was to come, but the stories are pretty
much undistinguished; you would be much better off reading
early classics like Caleb Williams and Confessions of a
Justified Sinner
S.S van Dine [even though I put a couple of his master
works up top--but only because they are quite fun and quaint and show an
idealized New York that nobody alive now remembers, if it ever existed] --
Ogden Nash said "Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance"
ANY of the French authors (Simenon, 'Arsène Lupin', etc.) --
Gaboriau is boring, and Leroux had a screw loose [the Gallic soul does
not lend itself to mystery novels as we know them -- nor does the German,
but I have NEVER read even a halfway decent German detective story
and at least the French ones have a modicum of style]. Note: a reader of
this web page took me to task over including Simenon (Insp. Maigret) in this
list, so I will check some of the books out and update this page if it's
justified.
Biggers's Charlie Chan [but some of the movies are great fun
if you get stoned enough -- the politically incorrect Chineseness doesn't
upset me as much as the silliness]
Most of the 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' [Thinking Machine,
Max Carrados, Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner,
Martin Hewitt--what a bore he is--, Reggie Fortune, Uncle
Abner, etc. etc. etc.]
Raffles, Bulldog Drummond, and that ilk [even Richard
"39 Steps" Hannay, I regret to say, even though they are jolly
good ripping yarns]
Margery Allingham [yes, let's be honest, these books are BAD, very
poorly written stylistically, with hokey plots]
ANYBODY declared the heir to Christie or Sayers, even
if you could make a case for it (it's just a turnoff, although
not the author's fault -- blame the ad-men for overdoing a legitimate
hype) -- the true heir to Agatha Christie was whoever inherited her money
Oh, this could go on and on ....
General pet peeves: (1) Aristocrats as detectives (amateur or police),
(2) sightseeing books (I spent my last vacation in this place and will now write a mystery set there),
(3) 1st-person narratives of private detectives who are total thugs
(Mickey Spillane, et al -- how could they ever find the time and the literacy to write
them?), (4) sinister Chinamen or Arabs or Hispanics who are the epitome of evil in a Moriarty sense (well, Germans too, although some of Hitler's crowd really were that way), (5) jolly young undergraduates from Oxford or some such place involved in some
sort of caper, (6) 1920s flappers ditto (e.g., Tommy & Tuppence), and (7) Belgians or whatever with big brain cells who can't speak English properly (and I don't really
mean Hercule Poirot particularly -- thinking more of Jules de Grandin and that ilk) .
(8) Finally, there are the Had-I-But-Known mysteries, where the hero (usually heroine)
behaves like a perfect idiot -- a la Bluebeard, whatever you do don't go in that room,
or not to be sexist, tell Philip Marlowe to stay away from the place where he should
know damn well he's going to get the shit beat out of him.
This page has become relatively popular on the
Internet, so I get a lot of mail
about 'Why didn't you include...?' Good! I will read anything you highly recommend; if you
recommend something I've read but didn't like, well I will tell you so and why; if you
can sell me on something, that's great -- any new mystery writer is grist to this mill and
the finest flour will be acknowledged (very labored metaphor and a poor pun on flour/
flower). This, however, is a Best Of List, and it takes several rereadings of a book
to get it on here. My main Mystery page is more open and under constant modification,
so you are very likely to find mention of one of your favorite authors there, because I really
have read something like a thousand mystery novels over 35 years (who knows? at the rate
of 2 or 3 a week, but some of them rereadings, it all adds up, but I'm not mathematician enough
to calculate that with accuracy). Unfortunately, the books on the list are there permanently
as far as the list goes, and will not be replaced by other books (maybe just titles within
individual authors' works). So there's a problem: What about additions? It's really a list of
50 detective story writers, not 50 books, and it is now up to the limit. There were a couple
of slots open -- McCrumb just took one (4/97) and now it looks like Peter Robinson is going
to take the last one (#50 -- ETC.) unless #50 is to become the pointer to ANOTHER Top 50
list. Well, maybe I'll do that, or better yet just make this a "Best Mystery Page" without
numbers. If I do, though, the original list will be set up as a separate entity, with all of the
additions (like everything else here such as this footnote, stripped away leaving just the
list itself with no commentary).--- E-Mail
A note for the curious (and my European friends who read this web page): These are all English language books and for the most part take place in an Anglo-Saxon type society. Why is that? Here is a quotation from S.S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright) in one of his more percipient moments:
A detective novel is nearly always more popular in the country in which it is laid than in a foreign country where the conditions, both human and topographic, are unfamiliar.
The variations between English and American customs and police methods, and mental and temperamental attributes, are, of course, not nearly so marked as between those of America and France ... Many of the best French novels of this type have had indifferent sales in the United States. Gaston Leroux's "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" [etc.] have never had their deserved popularity in this country because of their foreign locales; but "The Phantom of the Opera," by the same author, which is a sheer story, has been a great success here, due largely to that
very unfamiliarity of setting that has worked against the success of his detective novels.
Just a minor comment: British and US titles of mystery stories (and other novels) are often changed for no apparent reason, apparently because American publishers think readers are too dumb to appreciate titles taken from literary quotations. This causes problems for book collectors and is needlessly confusing. Re-issues, in my opinion, should be given back their original titles. For example, Carr's The Hollow Man is in my opinion a far more evocative title than The Three Coffins.
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