Ellis Peters (Elizabeth Partridger) wrote some twenty-odd books about a 12th-century monk who suffered from Jessica Fletcher’s disease – that is, people seem to drop dead at his feet, and generally he has to clear the name of the obvious suspect.
His name is Brother Cadfael.
Looks like the Rohingya figure in that one, an ethic minority in Burma. That’s pronounced Ro-hin-ja, as the “gy-” configuration in Burmese is pronounced like a J at the start of syllables. They’re in the news a lot right now, because the Thai Navy keeps getting caught drowning Rohingya refugees at sea. Really.
So is Sharon McCrumb’s Bimbos of the Death Star. A sequel, Zombies of the Gene Pool, is worse.
There’s an interesting little subgenre of mysteries set at conventions.
Yeah, but they’re magnificently bad.
The best series with movie stars as detectives is George Baxt’s. Wikipediacalls them the Celebrity Murder series, but they’re often referred to as the Hollywood Murder Series.
We’re gotten away from “obscure”, haven’t we? Donald Westlake? Ellis Peters? Tayna Huff? These are some of the biggest names in the field.
I’ve read the first one. I’m not going to bother to look for the second.
Then there is Rocket to the Morgue set around LASFS - not a convention, which I have.
Can’t argue with that.
I can’t remember the name, but Groucho is also a character in a mystery set in the '30s - in Chicago. All I remember is that the detective had a cold the entire book and was always raiding toilets for paper. Which goes to show how good it was.
Diane Mott Davidson and the Cat who series infests the shelves of every bookstore I’ve ever been! Perhaps the definition of obscure in this thread is not having a movie made from it.
I love Andrew Vachss’s Burke series, though they are very roman noir
The Joshua Croft series (5 books) by Walter Satterthwait are among my favorites, and pretty obscure, I think.
http://mysteriouspress.com/authors/walter-satterthwait/default.asp
Set in Sante Fe, as I recall. Frequently goes against convention, as in one book, where Our Hero, who is a pretty tough hombre, gets his ass kicked in a bar fight.
Yeah, sure - point out to everybody that I forgot to proofread before posting…
Somebody mentioned Matt Helm - I like him far better than Bond (especially the first dozen or so books). Another old spy series that’s really good is Johnny Fedora, by Desmond Cory (16 books, 1951-71).
Thomas Perry wrote some good thrillers - Metzger’s Dog is one that I reread every three or four years.
Perry also wrote the Jane Whitefield books, the first one was especially excellent (I think the first was Vanishing Act).
Might as well also mention Ross Thomas’s Artie Wu/Quincy Durant books, which are most excellent and not as frequently mentioned as they deserve. There are only 3 or 4, the first being Chinaman’s Chance. He is especially good at dialogue.
As for Matt Helm, there was a series of movies in the 1960s starring Dean Martin. Sort of a poor man’s James Bond.
I don’t know how obscure/mainstream it is, I’m more of an SF guy, but I thought I’d mention the Dan Starkey novels by Colin Bateman. Starts with Divorcing Jack.
Well, I don’t think these are very obscure to people who read a lot of crime series, but I’ll throw them out in case anyone hasn’t happened upon them:
The Grijpstra and de Gier novels by Dutch author Janwillem van de Wetering, which are hugely popular in, well, Holland, I guess, but don’t think as well known in the US. They’re police detectives, the crimes are very gritty, somewhat psychologically dark … but the books still have some humor. And some unintentional humor is that because the series began in the 1970s, there are some Austin Powers-type situations, written completely straight.
Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series I think of as more traditional mystery, not so much thriller, but I enjoyed it lot. January is a free person of color, living in New Orleans, and he gets involved with investigating various crimes that happen in the intersection of the slave, free person, and white societies. I would say the first four or so are really engrossing, then the scenarios start to get a little crazy.
A lot of the names thrown out here are hardly obscure or semi-obscure! Elizabeth George? Ed McBain? Seriously?
I will offer up The Nameless Detective series by Bill Pronzini (who I think is married to Sara Paretsky?) - there are quite a few, and I’ve searched out and read every single one of them. (He’s nameless because…well, his name is never mentioned in any of the books!)
Here’s one that isn’t well known – Robert Irvine’s Moroni Traveler series. Moroni is a Mormon detective in Salt Lake City. The books are written by someone familiar with LDS culture and with Salt Lake geography.
That last point is significant. Ever since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set half of the first Sherlock Holmes novel (A Study in Scarlet) in Utah and depicted Brigham Young and the Mormons travelling to the site of Salt Lake City by going through the Great Salt Desert (which is actually on the west of SLC, on side Young wouldn’t be going through), mystery writers have been royally screwing up Salt Lake City geography.
Thomas Cook kept up the tradition in Tabernacle, and so did some (non-fictional) accounts of the Mark Hoffman Document Forgery and Bombing affair.
But Irvine is evidently from Utah, and gets his geography and the feel of the place down pat. Out of town writers, especially those who had never been there, fail to have their characters deal with the city’s unusual features and culture.
Baptism for the Dead is the first in the series. I haven’t read all of them, and, away from SLC, they weren’t easy to come by.
IME, while Westlake is well known, plenty of his readers do not know Richard Stark, Allan Marshall, Allan Marsh, Andrew Shaw, and the ten or so others…
I thought sure that these would be mentioned by now, but my favorites (although I’m not sure how obscure they are) are:
The Favlia de Luce stories by Alan Bradley featuring a 12 year old schoolgirl as the detective.
… and …
Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May mysteries as members of the Peculiar Crimes unit in London.
I enjoy Sara Wood’s series about Barrister Anthony Maitland. They were written from the 60s through the 80s. I see she wrote under some other names but I have never read them. The Maitland series is an interesting look at the British legal system but not being British I don’t know how accurate it is. I like that Maitland’s wife is involved in nearly every case. Not always common in the time period.
As you mentioned Austin Powers-ish situations, may I add Aaron Marc Stein? I believe the protagonist was Matt Erridge, a globe trotting civil engineer.
Thought of that series after I went to bed… Read them years ago, loved them. They were sort of my introduction to the Netherlands. So much so that when I finally got to Amsterdam I had to try Jenever. Once was enough.
Also should have remember the John Burdett Bangkok series. Awesome.
I enjoyed both the series.
Are the Ballad series by Sharyn McCrumb too popular to count?
I like many of the old crime/thriller writers, e.g. Eric Ambler. (Or is he too great to be “obscure”?) Recently I bought and enjoyed a “noir” novel by David Goodis at an obscure book store.
A more modern, but somewhat obscure thriller writer is Adam Hall, a pen-name of Elleston Trevor. I love Hall’s Quiller novels so much I still check the H section of book stores, even though I’ve long since concluded that I’ve read them all. (Many used book stores have zero Adam Hall novels, leading me to conclude he is obscure or under-appreciated.)