If I wanted to read the greatest example of the private detective novel, what would it be? What I mean by that is the old school tough guy Humphery Bogart, “Dixon Hill” 40s style detective with a real falvor of the era. What is the best novel to read that represents that archetype?
The Maltese Falcon?
I mean it’s pretty much got everything – the hard boiled detective with the dead partner, the duplicitous dame, the object of infinite desire, the bad guy and his toadying lackey. I can’t remember if the detective gets beat up and/or drugged and beat up, but that probably happens.
Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”.
The quintessential detective novel (as described in the OP) is probably The Maltese Falcon, but my favorite is and will always be The Long Goodbye
I’d go with The Big Sleep also. You’ve got to give props to a mystery novel where not even the author knows who dunnit:
I’ll second The Long Goodbye, but I have a soft place in my heart for Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. It’s more of a shoot 'em up than a mystery, but the narrator is as sharp and as tough as they come.
He’s not the best writer, but if your taste for detectiove stories includes more sex and violence than Hammett or Chandler, I’d go for Mickey Spillane. Start with I, the Jury.
I think most definitely it would have to be one of Dashiell Hammett’s works, he practically invented the genre, or at least produced its early masterpieces.
The Maltese Falcon has already been mentioned and I think that’s the Hammett I’d nominate too. It really is the private eye novel.
The Red House, by A.A. Milne. He set himself to write a detective mystery, and he succeeded so perfectly that he never needed to do another one.
The culprit, IIRC, was the butler. With the HUNNY pot.
Harrumph. Poe, Christie, and Doyle beg to differ.
I suspect you meant that Hammett was an early master of hard-boiled detective fiction. On this point, I think there is no dispute.
If you take the broad genre of the detective novel in general, the quintessential novel is probably The Hound of the Baskervilles. That or one of Agatha Christie’s, but I’m not sure which one—some of her most famous ones subvert the conventions of the genre.
If you mean the subgenre described in the OP, I think the question has already been well answered.
Now that we’re at it, what are the “quintessential” examples of other subgenres? For example, I think John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins has a claim to be the quintessential “locked room mystery” novel.
I would also say The Maltese Falcon. In fact, I think it is not only the quintessential hard-boiled detective novel, I think it is one of the best American novels.
For the more cerebral, Golden Age detective, I would suggest Agatha Christie’s *Death on the Nile *or Ellery Queen’s The Greek Coffin Mystery.
While perhaps not the quintessential myster writer, let’s not forget Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. I would recommend Fer-de-Lance.
You might note that the OP said novel, while The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a short story.
Thanks for all the suggestions I guess “The Maltese Falcon” has top billing.
Read one Hammett and one Chandler. I’d go with The Maltese Falcon and Farewell, My Lovely.
Nit fairly picked. Larger point still valid.