Paul: August 2007 Archives

If I'm going to write in the mystery genre, I had best be familiar with its history. I have read widely in the genre, but not deeply and not with any sort of plan. So, I tallied entries from several best-of lists.

• Christie, Agatha The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
• Doyle, Arthur Conan The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
• Hammett, Dashiell The Maltese Falcon (1930)
• Crispin, Edmund The Moving Toyshop (1946)
• Highsmith, Patricia The Talented Mr. Ripley (1957)
• Collins, Wilkie The Moonstone (1868)
• Bentley, E.C. Trent's Last Case (1912)
• Hammett, Dashiell Red Harvest (1929)
• Sayers, Dorothy Strong Poison (1930)
• Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)
• Christie, Agatha Murder in the Orient Express (1934)
• Carr, John Dickson The Three Coffins (1935)
• Innes, Michael Hamlet, Revenge! (1937)
• Marsh, Ngaio Surfeit of Lampreys or Death of a Peer (1940)
• Fearing, Kenneth The Big Clock (1946)
• Gilbert, Michael Smallbone Deceased (1950)
• Tey, Josephine The Daughter of Time (1951)
• Allingham, Margery The Tiger in the Smoke (1952)
• Ambler, Eric A Coffin for Dimitrios (1937)
• Chandler, Raymond The Big Sleep (1939)
  

This list is not the least bit comprehensive. G.K. Chesterton is glaringly absent, for example, because no one agreed on which of his works is the greatest (the votes were split in effect). P.D. James is missing for the same reason. I have read both James and Chesterton extensively (and recently), so I left them off.

I have read about 1/3 of those twenty, but not in many years. I had never even heard of several novels on the list, including Trent's Last Case. I'm a few chapters in, and enjoying it thoroughly.

If you want to explore best mystery lists yourself, here are a few:

• IMBA's 100 favorite mysteries of the 20th century
• Several lists can be found at topmystery.com
• MWA's Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time [PDF]
  

Tonight I read the Lawrence Block short story By the Dawn's Early Light (from the Best American Mystery Stories of the Century anthology). I enjoyed it. The protagonist is a hard drinking ex-cop named Matt Scudder who places justice ahead of the law. I haven't read any other Block pieces, but the story is told as a flashback so I assume Matt is a series character.

Thinking about the story, I remembered Matthew Baldwin's post about the difference between noir and hardboiled fiction. By the Dawn's Early Light is certainly hardboiled by that definition, but I'm not certain if it would also be entirely noir.

I picked-up an anthology called the Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. I'm going to read a bunch of the stories, and write little critiques in order to better understand the mystery short story format.

I was a reader all my life. I got it from my parents, who both spent hours with their noses in books. My mother preferred to sit on the floor in front of a heat register (usually the one under the breakfast counter in the kitchen). I think I was around seven years old when I first decided to write a book. I remember pulling my mom off the floor, saying "we can write a novel." That masterpiece is lost to history; I only remember that it was a mystery. I was heavily into the Bloodhound Gang and Scooby-Doo at that age. I was even head of a detective club with some neighborhood kids.

I think it's time to write a mystery novel again.