One Book Project

July 8, 2007 5:54 PM

Looking for something to read this summer? Well, if you like crime fiction The Rap Sheet has some recommendations for you.
posted by otio (4 comments total)

I haven't been into crime fiction for a long time, but it was good to see that Ross McDonald was one of the authors getting multiple mentions. I read a couple of his novels back in the mid 80s and was very impressed. His plots tend to turn on the subtleties of family dynamics rather than standard meat and potatoes devices like mistaken identity or wrong-place-wrong-time.

Over the years I've come to wonder if the people in charge of writing on the "Law and Order" programs on NBC weren't pretty close readers of his books. I generally find their stories satisfyingly complex and credible.
posted by hwestiii at 6:43 PM on July 8, 2007

Completely agree with the Lawrence Block (the Scudder series -- not the rest of his output) and Colin Harrison belong up there. Interested also to see a recommendation for The Deadly Percheron by John Franking Bardin -- definitely one of the weirdest I've read as well. Jim Thompson and Charles Willesford are on every list of this nature, so they're hardly underrated. Disappointed to see no Eugene Izzi on there though. Izzi has never even been published in the UK, despite his life warranting a mystery novel of its own.

Lots of interesting stuff I've never even heard of though.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:49 PM on July 8, 2007

This was a great link. Thanks.
posted by CCBC at 11:43 PM on July 8, 2007

No Elmore Leonard? That list is a waste of time.

Only one Thomas Perry, and that one an old sequel? His recent books are superior.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:20 AM on July 9, 2007