Crime Novels to Read Before You Die

[J. Kingston Pierce]

What are the crime, mystery, and thriller novels that every fan of this genre should be sure to read before he or she dies? That's the question Britain's Daily Telegraph asked a couple of weeks back, but its answers were ... well, let's be generous and call them unspectacular.

Hoping to do a better job, The Rap Sheet is putting together its own list of must-reads -- but we need your help. Which books and authors do you think should be included? We won’t limit our list falsely to 50 books and authors, as the Telegraph did, but will instead feature as many names as seems appropriate. And we'll publish the results sometime in the near future.

The floor is now open to suggestions, folks.

[Angela Zeman]

Eliot Pattison The Skull Mantra
James Lee Burke's Robichaux series
Minette Walters' stand alones
Val McDermid's stand alones
Ellis Peters Cadfael series
Jeffery Deaver
John Connolly
Stephen Hunter
John Gardner's Families Trilogy and the Herbie series
Don Westlake
Robert Barnard
Peter Lovesey

[JackBludis]

You mention one of the most unappreciatiated of the crime writers, not to mention a great movie reviewer--Stephen Hunter.

Jack

[Sara Meredith]

Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case and all of the other novels; Michael Connelly, Rex Stout, and Dashiell Hammett.

[BrianLindenmuth]

The Lew Griffin books by James Sallis
Drive by James Sallis
Last Call by Tim Powers
Kiss Me Judas by Will Christopher Baer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Red Baker by Robert Ward
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
The God File by Frank Turner Hollon
The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle
The Impossible Bird by Patrick O'Leary
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
The Ruined Map by Kobo Abe
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
The Skin Palace by Jack O'Connell
Batman: Year One by Frank Miller
Clockers by Richard Price
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
An Instance of the Fingerposts
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
The Devil's Redhead by David Corbett
The Shark Infested Custard by Charles Willeford
The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes
Giveadamn Brown by Robert Dean Pharr
The Jones Men by Vern E. Smith
American Skin by Ken Bruen

[Diane Meyer]

Hi everybody, hope you all are having a great day! I think that The Thin Man, Charlie Chan, Helter Skelter, Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon, Comrade Chikatilo, Conspiracy of Silence, Hannibal Rising, Caril, Murder in Coweta County, Black Dahlia, any books by Mark Furhman, Joseph Wambaugh, James Ellroy, Harold Schechter, Ron Franscell, Ann Rule, The Zodiac, The Serial Killer Files, Written in Blood, L.A. Confidential, Children Who Kill, Maltese Falcon, Righteous Carnage, Perry Mason books, Fall (Ron Franscell), Cannibals. I could go on and on, there are the older books from my dad's time), Robert Parker, oops! there I go again. Better leave well enough alone. I hope these helped a bit, they happen to be some of my favorites. Thanks for the chance to list some of them. Diane Meyer (Grandma591)