Huge crime novel/thriller fan here. The recent thread(s) about Travis McGee got me thinking. There is the pantheon, the very popular detectives or other characters–your Trav McGees, Spencers, Lew Archers, Sam Spades. Then there are the Kinsey Millhone/V.I. Warshawski/Elvis Coles of the world, still very popular, maybe not as well-regarded as the very top. But there are a metric shit ton of crime/detective/thriller series out there. What are some of your favorites that we fans might have missed? Here’s three of mine.
Bony, AKA Napoleon Bonaparte-- a half-caste police detective in 30’s Australia. Arthur Upfield wrote close to twenty Bony books, the last were written in the 60’s. They are in my top 5 all-time favorites. Period detail is fascinating, a lot of wonderful facts about aboriginal life, and Bony himself is a delight.
The Tromp Kruger books by James McClure. Set in 60’s/70’s South Africa, these books explore apartheid in a brutal but nuanced fashion. Tromp has a Bantu assistant whom he trusts and likes much more than his white counterparts, and this relationship casts a critical and again fascinating light on that place and time. There are eight of these.
And the LaLa Land books by Robert Campbell. Four of them, I think. Riveting, ugly, gruesome, with wistful, damaged PI Whistler sitting in a diner watching the parade of Hollyword grotesques march by.
How about Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Man Who novels? I loved them; good, hard-boiled PI books.
I also love Frank Rich’s Jake Strait novels: sort of a PI in a Phil Dick-like world. Great fun.
But the best (hell yeah I saved the best for last, natch!) are Peter Tasker’s Mori novels, Buddha Kiss and the fantastic Samurai Boogie. Seriously, who can resist a book called Samurai Boogie??
A friend of mine was a big fan of Upfield. Big enough to have reprinted one of his out-of-print books, The Beach of Atonement. I designed the cover, from his photo of the actual beach mentioned in the book. I haven’t read much of his work, but have liked what I read.
The Yellowthread Street police procedurals by William Marshall are as obscure as it gets. Set in Hong Kong before the Chinese took it over, the books are black comedies about the interplay between the British-dominated police force and the almost alien otherness of the daily life of the millions of Chinese they interact with.
Marshall writes in a style like nobody else in the world, so they aren’t for everyone. Doesn’t matter. He’s a major talent. His set-ups are the best in the business. Head First is my favorite. To greatly paraphrase:
His endings are equally wild. As Mickey Spillane once said, “My first chapter gets them to buy the book. My last chapter gets them to buy the next book.” That’s Marshall to a T.
Reginald Hill’s Dalziel & Pascoe series (the books, not the BBC shows). The earlier ones were simple detective stories, but the ensemble of characters develop deeply over time, and the last six or so are so complex. Additionally, your vocabulary will increase immensely. I could not read these without notebook, pen and dictionary close by, for both new words and clever turns of phrase. Reginald Hill died last year, so sadly there will be no more.
The Inspector Lynley series by Elizabeth George (again, the books rather than the BBC tv shows) is also intelligent, well written, and with many good characters. They occur in various parts of England, and I enjoyed reading about the areas as well as some of the historical events referred to.
The Lake District mysteries by Martin Edwards is also good. Interesting plots, good character development.
I love the Pendergast novels by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston. I’m not sure if they are or are not obscure. All I know is that the bookworms I have introduced to the series never heard of them,and they’ve loved them after reading.
Do these count as obscure? They were big in their day, but you don’t see them on bookshelves now (if you can find a bookstore): Judge Dee – Robert Hans van Gulik was a Dutch diplomat serving in China who wrote novels about a (real) T’ang dynasty administrator in English. He started out translating an 18th century historical novel/detective story as Dee Goong An/The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, then, because people were interested, he wrote a series of five novels using details from other judges’ cases (all of them titled “The Chinese ______ Murders” – with the blank being filled in with “Gold”, “Lake”, “Maze”, “Nail”). Then he wrote quite a few more, filling out his fictionalized life of Dzien Djieh Dee. There was an overall story arc and details that ran through the whole series so they all of them (except the Dee Goong An) fit together to make a cohesive whole, with foreshadowing and everything. Great stuff. The books inspired a six-part BBC series in the 1960s and an American TV movie that was supposed to be the pilot for a series that never happened. In the past twenty years several people have written their own Judge Dee novels, which aren’t always faithful to van Gulik’s interpretation. There’s been a Chinese Judge Dee martial arts film, which doesn’t fit with these at all. Read the original books, and see the TV movie (produced by Nicholas Meyer, of Seven Per Cent Solution and Star Trek II and IV fame)
Ed and Am Hunter – Fredric Brown was the Master of the Short Story, whether in science fiction, fantasy, or mystery. He is, sadly, out of print, although it seemed that until about 20 years ago there’d be at least one of his books out on the bookshelves. Now you can’t even find him in used book shops (I haven’t checked e-books). His very first mystery novel was The Fabulous Clipjoint, a mystery set in Chicago (the titular clipjoint), when teenaged Ed Hunter tries to solve the murder of his father, eventually helped by his carny uncle Ambrose. It’s a heckuva first novel, deriding many of the popular mystery conventions and with very interesting characters. Brown went on to use the pair in other novels and short stories. At first they were with the carnival (a favorite setting for Brown), but later set up a detective agency. Brown ran the series from 1948 to the 1960s, so at the end this post-war bunch is dealing with Greenwich Village hipsters and hippies.
Christopher G Moore writes detective novels featuring Vinnie Calvino, a private eye from the US who relocated to Thailand. I read one of his novels accidentally while searching for new work published by the other Christopher Moore and have gone on to be a real fan of his work.
I love these - my Grandmother had 3 or 4 books of Judge Dee, and I remember seeing the TV movie Judge Dee and the Monastary Murders back in the 70s - I would love a copy of it on DVD/electronic file. The Judge Dee movie they came out with a couple years ago suffers by only being subtitled, I would love a dubbed version. [though I do watch subtitled stuff, there is a fair amount of decent stuff on streaming Netflix, I just watched a really neat Jackie Chan flick a couple days ago.]
Hells bells, there is another Chinese detective series, but all I am pulling up is Judge Dee stuff. It is a different medieval judge, with a couple of assistants one of whom I seem to remember was a petty criminal of some sort. I will ask mrAru if he remembers the books and if not it will have to wait until I can get back to the sub base library to have the librarian check my ancient backlist.
The Lillian Jackson Braun Quilleran ‘The Cat Who’ series. Really light hammock reading.
One of my absolute favorites, Lindsey Davis “Falco” series - a private informer working in Imperial Rome of Vespasian. She actually does a fair amount of research and manages to make a very easy to read ride. The original Falco series is wrapped up, but his adopted daughter is apparently the focus of a new series but I haven’t managed to get any of them yet.
The Aloysius Pendergast series, started with Relic and Reliquary, Relic got made into a film. I think the series [at least the first 2 books] was supposed to be horror, but it got changed into a detective/mystery/whatever series. Diane Mott Davidson has a series about Goldie Schulz, a caterer that also throws in a bunch of interesting recipes. Light and enjoyable.
Why yes we do tend to read a lot here, and on a wide range of book types
I enjoy the Professor Peter Shandy mysteries by Charlotte MacLeod, and the 87th Precinct mysteries by Ed McBain. The former is a series of cozies, the latter, very hard-boiled.
These are all great. I’ve read a few, most not. Keep em comin! I will note that I am a fan of hard-boiled, seamy. violent, perverse. The lighter stuff doesn’t often interest me. Except when it does of course.
Tao Gan, one of Dee’s assistants, was a petty criminal. He’s played by Mako in the TV movie. Dee had two other “lieutenants”, as well as old Sergeant Hoong. All of these are mentioned in the 18th century Dee Goong An (which isn’t historical, and was written wayyyy after the real Dee’s death), and Gulik simply took them over whole and re-used them himself.
I can’t think of anyone else quite like Dee, though.
Those were by far his best. The only other series I remember as being at all readable was The Toff, written under his real name. They were of course imitations of Leslie Charteris’ The Saint, and I’d definitely recommend starting with the Saint. There were approximately one billion Saint stories and novels over 35 years, so there’s enough there to last close to forever.
