My list of 2007

[Juri Nummelin]

I posted this list to the Rara-Avis e-mail list earlier today and thought I should repost it here:

The strongest novel I read during the last year was Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND from 1954 that was translated in Finnish for the first time. It's hardboiled and it's noir and I really think everyone on this list should read it, even though it's also science fiction and horror. Forget the films.
Other noirish and hardboiledish novels I enjoyed during 2007:

Allan Guthrie: HARD MAN
Sean Chercover: BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD
Kevin Wignall: WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? (without Matheson, this would be the book of the year), also Kevin's AMONG THE DEAD
Brian Garfield: KOLCHAK'S GOLD; HOPSCOTCH
Reed Farrel Coleman: THE JAMES DEANS
a collection of Leigh Brackett's Mars stories
Stephen Greenleaf: GRAVE ERROR
H.A. DeRosso: .44 (perhaps the noirest Western novel ever written, very much like David Goodis)

I also might add that Marquis de Sade's JUSTINE is just as chilling as any noir novel and qualifies as a crime novel. Not hardboiled in the sense of "colloquial", though.

One of the most important things on the publishing front in Finnish was that Stephen Crane's Western short stories were translated for the first time in a nice collection. Some might detect pre-noir tones in them.

The major disappointment of the year was Paul Malmont's hyped THE CHINATOWN CLOUD DEATH PERIL.