Famous Forever?

[Bill Crider]

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
- Charles de Montesquieu

That was the "quote of the day" on my homepage not long ago. It gave me a smile, but at the same time it made me think a little. Will my books be boring anybody in future generations? To be honest, I don't think so. But what about your books? And if not yours, who among the current crop of crime writers do you think will still be read in 50 or 100 years?

[Eric Christopherson]

Being read 50 years later? Big deal. You really want to be somebody nowadays, you've got to inspire a theme park ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19211348/site/newsweek/

[Bill Crider]

Yeah, old Chuck was one of the greats.

[Sunflowercat]

It'll be someone with a cult following -- Vachss, maybe, or Bruen.

[Bill Crider]

Or maybe somebody we're not even thinking of, not big now but huge later on.

[Sunflowercat]

Charlie Huston could certainly be The One.

[Bill Crider]

Would be cool if so.

[Brian Thornton]

Coming late to this discussion, but wanted to add my two cents. Of all of the writers currently plying their trade as mystery types, I'd pick Megan Abbott and Sean Chercover as the two I'd consider most likely to stand the test of the decades. I'm a big fan of Megan's work, and I am currently working my way through Chercover's fist novel, BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD, which I find delightfully devoid of many of the shop-worn cliches of the P.I. novel, while still honoring the traditions of the sub-genre. It's really something else.

[Bill Crider]

I'm with you on Megan Abbott. I haven't read Chercover's book yet.

[Burl Barer]

If the books are boring, no one will be reading them. Several years ago, someone asked me "why don't you write a book?" My reply : "Oh no! If it isn't any good, it will haunt me forever!" HA! If it weren't any good, it wouldn't get published, and if it were marginal, it would be out of print pretty darn fast -- ang certainly not haunt me. So, I wrote a book. Then another, and another and another. The "haunting" is now termed "royalty checks" Whoooopie.
Who will still be read in 50 years?

Well, in 50 years I'll be too old or dead to read anything.

[I. J. Parker]

Impossible to guess, though I no longer read Christie and others because they have become dated. This applies not only to the setting of their mysteries, but also to the way mystery authors used to write, what mattered to them then, and what they specifically ignored.

I have no idea how future generations will feel about my books. At the moment I still have to make a name for myself. But my settings are historical, and that means that they will age a tad better than very current settings using much time-specific detail that may no longer be understood in the future.