Wide Reading Suggestions for Crime Writing
This bibliography is a work-in-progress: any suggestions and/or corrections would be greatly appreciated
Sandra Smith. Send any email to sandra.e.smith@det.nsw.edu.au
The best candidates for Extension 1 will be those who have a comprehensive grasp of the
genre: this is fostered through the widest of crime reading.
 Make sure that you read regularly and plan what your read.
 Each time you read make careful notes about the crime, its investigation, justice,
detective/investigator, victim, perpetrator, plot, characters, setting and the values
implied in each story. Note the transformations & subversions of the genre
conventions.
 Read texts that conform to the conventions of the genre, and some that push the
boundaries to transform and/or subvert the conventions.
 Read some that are on the best seller lists of popular fiction (remember Fay
Weldon’s advice) and some that are not so well known.
 Wide reading will help your creative writing: note especially the different structures,
settings, characters, word choice, etc
 The rubric for Crime Writing emphasises the craft of writing so be imaginative,
innovative, experimental in your writing and reading
A good guide for wide reading of crime writing is to make sure that you have read at least 20
different authors in these categories:
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French Crime writing at least ONE author
The Great Detective: at least TWO different authors
The Golden Age Novel: at least TWO different authors
The Private Eye: at least TWO different authors
Women Detectives: at least TWO different authors
Australian Crime writing: at least ONE author
Crime writing without a detective: at least ONE author
Historical detectives: at least ONE author
True Crime writing: at least ONE author
Idiosyncratic Crime writing: at least ONE author
New Hard Realists: at least ONE author
Literary Fiction in Crime Writing: at least ONE author
Police Procedurals & Modern Police Sleuths: at least TWO authors
Best seller crime writing: at least ONE author
Non Anglo-Franco-American crime writing: at least ONE author
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
1
French Crime Writing
Eugene Francois Vidocq
Memoires (1828)
Emile Gaboriau
Monsieur Lecoq; “The Little Old Man of Batignolles”
Gaston Leroux
The Mystery of the Yellow Room(1907)
Maurice Leblanc
Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Cambrioleur (1907)
Georges Simenon with
detective Jules Maigret
Maigret and the Ghost, Maigret in Court
Fred Vargas
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (2004)
The Great Detective
Edgar Allan Poe
Arthur Conan Doyle
Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin eg “Murders in the Rue Morgue”
(1841)
Sherlock Holmes eg “A Study in Scarlet” (1887)
Jacques Futrelle
Professor Augustus Van Dusen aka “Thinking Machine”
G. K. Chesterton
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
Sax Rohmer
The Insidious Fu Manchu (1913)
Ernest Bramah
Max Carrados, the blind detective, eg Max Carrados (1914),
The Eyes of Max Carrados (1923)
Dorothy Sayers
Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane eg Gaudy Night; Whose
Body?
Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot eg Murder on the Orient Express
Rex Stout
Nero Wolfe, quintessential armchair detective, eg Fer de
Lance (1935) Meet Nero Wolfe
Dashiell Hamett
Sam Spade eg The Maltese Falcon
Edgar Allan Poe
Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin eg “Murders in the Rue Morgue”
(1841)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
2
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes eg “A Study in Scarlet” (1887)
Jacques Futrelle
Professor Augustus Van Dusen aka “Thinking Machine”
G. K. Chesterton
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
Golden age novel (Inter war years: 1918 - 1939)
Robert Graves and Peter Hodges in their social history The Long Weekend (1940) make the
point that detective fiction dominated the lowbrow fiction. However, those that wrote
detective fiction have maintained their readership and are still household names eighty
years later.
Christie & Sayer realise it made better economic sense to write novels than short stories.
All crime but especially murder was seen as an offense against the established order. In its
implicit endorsement of the rule of law, the Golden Age novel mirrored the support usually
given by the British public to the police. Rarely was much made by the authors in the way of
attempts to understand the actions of the murderer or mitigations of the crime.
“The comfortable, predictable, and ordered world of this period in detective writing
manifested itself in a deliberate under-characterisation of those depicted in the action and a
noted, if unreal, felicity of phrase and quotation.” Catherine Aird in Oxford Companion to
Crime and Mystery Writing (1999) (Roslyn Herbert ed)
Settings are important usually rural and pastorally idyllic eg Christie’s The Sittaford Mystery
(1931), The Murder at Hazelmoor; or Sayer’s The Nine Tailors (1934) portray the familiar
parts of the English countryside with insight and affection.
Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot eg. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Miss Marple eg. Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
Dorothy Sayers
Lord Peter Wimsey (& Harriet Vane) eg Gaudy Night; Whose
Body?
(Edith) Ngaio Marsh
Inspector Roderick Alleyn eg A Man Lay Dead; The Crime at
Black Dudley
Margery Allingham
Albert Campion eg. The Case of the Late Pig; The Tiger in the
Smoke
Patricia Wentworth
a spinster detective - predating Miss Marple – Miss Silver in
The Grey Mask (1928)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
3
Josephine Tey
Inspector Alan Grant in The Man in the Queue (1929); The
Daughter of Time; The Franchise Affair
Georgette Heyer
Death in the Stocks (1935); Why Shoot a Butler? (1933)
Gladys Mitchell
formidable detective (clever lady is a psychiatrist and a
feminist) Mrs (later Dame) Adela Lestrange Bradley The
Saltmarsh Murders (1932)
Mignon Eberhart
female evaluative analysis starting with The Patient in Room
18 (1929)
Cyril Hare
lucid legal mysteries started with Tenant for Death (1937)
Josephine Bell
realistic, detective-free crime stories The Port of London
Murders (1938) still seem up to date.
Nicholas Blake (pseudonym
of Cecil Day Lewis)
his detective Nigel Strangeways (modelled on W. H. Auden) in
A Question of Wealth (1935); A Question of Proof
Arthur Upfield
set in outback Australia with an Aboriginal detective
Napoleon Bonaparte eg The Bone is Pointed
“The Body in the Library” school, minor social events such as the tennis party eg. (A. B.
Cox’s pseudonym) Francis Iles’s Malice Aforethought (1931)
Gordon Daviot’s Kif (1929) unusual in The Golden Age Novel in that sympathy is extended to
the criminal.
John Dickson Carr took the “Locked Room Mystery” or “The Impossible Crime” to its apogee
with The Three Coffins (1935); The Hollow Man; Hag’s Nook (1933); It Walks by Night (1930).
S.S. Van Dine and Ellery Queen represented the Americans with murders set in the social
and financial life of New York eg The Benson Murder Case. The purest clue puzzles were
created by Ellery Queen (two cousins wrote as Ellery Queen: Frederic Dannay and Manfred
B. Lee) eg The Roman Hat Mystery.
Hard-boiled or “tough” writing feature detectives owing allegiance only to their own
conception of justice eg. Dashiell Hammett Red Harvest (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930),
The Glass Key (1931).
Slowly, the public perception of improvements in actual police procedure and in the
expansion of forensic science are reflected in Croft’s Inspector Joseph French in Inspector
French’s Greatest Case (1924) and Henry Wade’s Constable Guard Thyself (1934).
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
4
The Private Eye
Private eye is a revealing and accurate pun on P.I. (private investigator). Private is
emphasised, that is the secret, the mysterious, the private rather than public. The “private
eye” or “shamus” is a detective hero of a peculiarly American type who first made his
appearance in the early 1920s as a hybrid of the lone frontier individual and the Great
Detective tradition. The private investigator is different from the police investigator as the
police must take all cases, the private investigator can choose their cases. This sub-genre
has introduced a new form to Crime Writing: the detective story is closed and circular, the
private eye story is open and linear.
Joseph T. Shaw editor of Black Mask magazine
Dashiell Hamett
Red Harvest (1929), The Glass Key (1931); Nick Charles in The
Thin Man (1934); Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1930);
the Continental Op.
Raymond Chandler
Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1939), The Long Goodbye
(1953), Farewell My Lovely (1940).
Ross Macdonald
Lew Archer novels especially The Goodbye Look (1969), The
Underground Man (1971); The Moving Target
Mickey Spillane
Mike Hammer in I, The Jury (1947); One Lonely Night (1951);
Kiss Me Deadly (1952)
Cornell Woolrich
his ‘black’ short stories eg “The Bride wore Black”; “It Had To
Be Murder”; “Two Murders, One Crime”.
Robert B. Parker
completed a Raymond Chandler unfinished novel Poodle
Springs?
Walter Mosley
Easy Rawlins The Devil in a Blue Dress (1990); A Little Yellow
Dog (1996)
James Ellroy
Blood on the Moon (1984); The Big Nowhere (1988); The Black
Dahlia (1987); L.A. Confidential (1990); American
Tabloid(1995)
P. D. James
Cordelia Gray in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972).
Surprisingly a British author who creates the first female
detective.
Marcia Muller
Sharon McCone eg Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
5
Sara Paretsky
V. I. Warshawski eg Tunnel Vision (1987), Killing Orders (1985)
Sue Grafton
Kinsey Millhone stars in the alphabet titles from A is for Alibi
to V is for Vendetta.
Liza Cody
Anna Lee eg Bad Company (1982); Dupe(1980); Under
Contract (1986)
Women Detectives
Anon
Experiences of a Lady Detective (1861) UK
Catherine Louisa Pirkis
The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (1894) UK
Matthias MacDonnell
Bodkin
Amanda Cross
Dora Myrl, The Lady Detective (1900) UK
P. D. James
Cordelia Gray in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972).
Surprisingly a British author who creates first female
detective. The sequel is equally surprising: A Skull Beneath the
Skin (1982)
S. J. Rozan
China Trade (1994) Lydia Chin works with Bill Smith in New
York’s Chinatown.
Dana Stabenow
A Cold Day for Murder (1992). Kate Shugak was the star
investigator of the Anchorage Alaska D.A.’s office before she
returns to her Aleut roots (Eskimo) where her talent for
detection makes her a very tough crime tracker in far north
Alaska.
Stella Duffy & Lauren
Hendersen (eds)
Tart Noir. Collection of 20 short stories by women crime
writers.
Denise Mina
Garnethill trilogy
Marcia Muller
Sharon McCone eg Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977)
Sara Paretsky
V. I. Warshawski is a tough female investigator from Chicago
eg Tunnel Vision (1987), Killing Orders (1985)
Sue Grafton
Kinsey Millhone eg B for Burglar(1986), F for Fugitive (1989)
Kate Fansler series eg In the Last Analysis (1964)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
6
Laura Lippman
Tess Monaghan PI in Baltimore Blues; In Big Trouble
Liza Cody
Anna Lee eg Bad Company (1982); Dupe(1980); Under
Contract (1986)
Katherine V. Forrest
Kate Delafield is a lesbian investigator eg Amateur City (1984),
Murder at the Nightwood Bar (1987), The Beverly Malibu
(1989)
Valerie Wilson Wesley
Tamara Hayle eg When Death Comes Stealing (1990)
Patricia Cornwell
Dr Kay Scarpetta eg Postmortem (1990)
Kathy Reichs
Dr Tempe Brennan eg Déjà vu (1997)
Sandra Scoppettone
Gonna Take a Homicidal Journey set in 1940s New York City
Marele Day
Claudia Valentine eg The Life and Times of Harry Lavender
Kerry Greenwood
Phryne Fisher eg Cocaine Blues; Flying Too High
Australian Crime Writing
Fergus Hume
Peter Temple
Peter Corris
Shane Maloney
Adrian Hyland
Marele Day
Kerry Greenwood
Al Turello
set in Melbourne this is Crime Writing’s first major
international blockbuster novel: The Mystery of a Hansom
Cab (1886)
The Broken Shore (2005) & Truth. Terrific writing, great book,
with very interesting police officer Joe Cashin; series with Jack
Irish eg White Dog
considered the godfather of Australian crime writing. Private
investigator Phil Hardy eg Deep Water; Salt and Blood
Labor politician & investigator Murray Whelan eg The Big Ask
Written by an indigenous Australian, the focus is on Emily
Tempest an Aboriginal Community Police Officer in a
community in the Northern Territory. Terrific. Gunshot Road
(2010); Diamond Dove.
Claudia Valentine eg Disappearances of Madelene Grimaldi;
The Life and Times of Harry Lavender
Phryne Fisher eg Cocaine Blues; Flying Too High (set in 1920s
Australia but written in 2000s)
Wild Justice
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
7
Gary Disher
Chain of Evidence
Elliott Perlman
Three Dollars; Seven Types of Ambiguity
Arthur Upfield
Tara Moss
set in outback Australia with an Aboriginal detective
Napoleon Bonaparte eg The Bone is Pointed
written from the point of view of an “ambo”. Frantic; Violent
Exposure
Covet (2007); Split (2006); Hit (2007)
Richard Flanagan
The Unknown Terrorist
Robert Wainwright & Paola
Totara
A Dangerous Mind (2009) looks at Martin Bryant
Katherine Howell
Crime Writing Without a Detective/Investigator (Also think psychological
thriller)
Josephine Bell
Ruth Rendell
realistic, detective-free crime stories The Port of London
Murders (1938) still seem up to date.
The Rottweiler; From Doon with Death; Harm Done
Catherine O’Flynn
What Was Lost
Alice Sebold
The Lovely Bones. Susie Salmon speaks from heaven to find
her murderer.
John Mortimer
Rumpole of the Bailey. Short stories featuring the marvellous
Rumpole.
Carl Hiaasen
comic crime writing set in contemporary Florida eg Strip
Tease; Skinny Dip; Sick Puppy a crime centred on the crime of
the environment begins with littering, then real estate
development of a nature sanctuary.
Margaret Millar
The Beast in View. Intriguing story of a woman with a split
personality, told from her point of view.
Graphic Novels Crime Writing
Debbie Bishop
Black Tide: Awakening of the Key
Alan Moore & Dave
Gibbons
Watchmen
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
8
Historical Detectives in Crime Writing
Lindsey Davis
set in ancient Rome with Marcus Falco eg. Silver Pigs; Nemesis
John Maddox Robert
set in ancient Rome eg. SPQR
Margaret Doody
set in ancient Greece
Leonard Tourney
set in Tudor times with the town constable eg Low Treason
Ellis Peters
Sarah Waters
medieval detective Brother Cadfael eg The Knocker on Death’s
Door
Fingersmith; Nightwatch; The Little Stranger
Peter Lovesey
Sergeant Cribb stories eg Abracadaver
William Marshall
The New York Detective
Lawrence Alexander
set in Victorian America (around the time of Teddy Roosevelt)
eg The Strenuous Life; Speak Softly; The Big Stick
Andrew Taylor
The American Boy; Anatomy of Ghosts
Josephine Tey
The Daughter of Time
Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose (1980)
Robert van Gulik
set in the Tang dynasty and based on historical court records
Judge Dee is the detective eg The Chinese lake Murders, The
Chinese Nail Murders, Lacquer Screen; The Haunted
Monastery; The Chinese Maze Mysteries
Lindsey Davis
set in ancient Rome with Marcus Falco eg. Silver Pigs; Nemesis
Flash Fiction: Go to Google, look it up, read it, write some.
True Crime Writing
Eugene Francois Vidocq
Memoires (1828)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
9
Truman Capote
In Cold Blood(1965)
Vincent Bugliosi
Helter Skelter: A True Story of the Manson Murders (1974)
Anne Rule
The Stranger Beside Me (1980)
Joseph Wambaugh
The Onion Field (1973)
Colin Wilson
A Casebook for Murder (1969)
John Dickson Carr
The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936)
William Bolitho
Murder for Profit (1926)
Douglas Starr
The Killer of Little Shepherds: The Case of the French Ripper
and the Birth of Forensic Science. Great read!
Nicholas Pileggi
Wise Guys Written by a criminal, ex-Mafia in the Witness
Protection Program. Scorsese’s film Goodfellas (1990)is based
on this book.
James Ellroy
Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.
John Grisham
An Innocent Man
Candace Sutton & Ellen
Connolly
Lady Killer (2009)
Robert Wainwright & Paola
Totara
A Dangerous Mind (2009) looks at Martin Bryant
New Hard Realists Crime Writing
Jake Arnott
He Kills Coppers; The Long Firm (1999)
David Peace
Danny King
Nineteen Seventy-Four ; Nineteen Seventy-Seven; Nineteen
Eighty; Nineteen Eighty-Three (Red Riding Quartet) (British);
The Burglar Diaries; The Bank Robber Diaries (British)
Ken Bruen
A White Arrest
Susanna Moore
In the Cut (Canadian)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
10
John Connolly
Irish but sets his Charlie Parker stories in New York and Maine
eg. Every Dead Thing
Dennis Lehane
Gone Baby Gone; Mystic River; Moonlight Mile (American, set
in Boston)
George Pelecanos
The Big Blowdown; Hell to Pay; Soul Circus;
Cormac McCarthy
No Country For Old Men
Don Winslow
The Power of the Dog; Savages
Michael Connelly
The Black Echo; Blood Work; The Narrows; Nine Dragons;
Lincoln Lawyer; Brass Verdict; The Fifth Witness.
Jim Thompson
The Killer Inside Me (1952)
Jake Arnott
He Kills Coppers; The Long Firm (1999)
David Peace
Nineteen Seventy-Four ; Nineteen Seventy-Seven; Nineteen
Eighty; Nineteen Eighty-Three (Red Riding Quartet) (British);
Idiosyncratic Crime Writing
Kinky Friedman
Jewish cowboy PI who loves Country and Western music eg
Roadkill
Jonathan Lethem
fascinating literary novel of a detective with Tourette’s
syndrome Motherless Brooklyn (1999)
Lionel Shriver
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Emma Lathen
A Shark Out of Water very accurate well written investigation
of crimes on Wall St written by two Harvard-trained women
one an economist and one a lawyer under the pen name
Emma Lathen.
Colin Bateman
Divorcing Jack; Maid of the Mist
George Perec
A Void intriguing mystery missing a vowel.
Scott Turow
set in Chicago, well written, from a lawyer’s point of view.
Pleading Guilty; Presumed Innocent; The Laws of Our Fathers;
Personal Injuries
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
11
Kinky Friedman
Jewish cowboy PI who loves Country and Western music eg
Roadkill
Jonathan Lethem
fascinating literary novel of a detective with Tourette’s
syndrome Motherless Brooklyn (1999)
Lionel Shriver
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Emma Lathen
A Shark Out of Water very accurate well written investigation
of crimes on Wall St written by two Harvard-trained women
one an economist and one a lawyer under the pen name
Emma Lathen.
Colin Bateman
Divorcing Jack; Maid of the Mist
George Perec
A Void intriguing mystery missing a vowel.
Scott Turow
set in Chicago, well written, from a lawyer’s point of view.
Pleading Guilty; Presumed Innocent; The Laws of Our Fathers;
Personal Injuries
Literary Crime Writing
Vladimir Nabokov
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941)
William Faulkner
Sanctuary
Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White. One of the great mystery thrillers from
the nineteenth century and beyond. Never been out of print!
Extraordinary heroine Marian Halcombe: tough, determined,
and feisty.
Carol Shields
Swann: A Mystery (1990) (UK title Mary Swann) told from
different points of view including a screenplay.
Aravind Adiga
The White Tiger (2008) Amazing epistolary crime novel by
intriguing cosmopolitan author: born in 1974 in India,
educated at Oxford and Columbia Universities, journalist at
Wall St Journal, The Time;, winner of Man Booker Prize 2008,
Australian citizen.
A.S. Byatt
Possession (1990)
Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
12
Patrick Susskind
Perfume
Alain Robbe-Grillet
The Erasers (1953)
Jose Luis Borges
Gertrude Stein
‘Death and Compass’ in Labyrinths (1962) is a reworking of a
G. K. Chesterton’s short story ‘The Wrong Shape’ (1911)
Blood on the Dining Room Floor
Franz Kafka
The Trial
Graham Greene
Brighton Park
Orhan Pamuk
recent Nobel Prize winner for Literature (2006) who writes
post-modern murder mysteries from multiple perspectives;
crimes set in historical Istanbul eg My Name is Red (1998);
Snow
Police Procedurals & Modern Police Sleuths
Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo
husband and wife journalists together wrote the 10 Martin
Beck novels. Outstanding. Each one a gem. Roseanna, The
Man Who Went Up in Smoke, The Man on the Balcony, The
Laughing Policeman, Murder at the Savoy, The Fire Engine
That Disappeared, The Abominable Man, The Cop Killer, The
Terrorists, The Locked Room.
Hillary Waugh
Last Seen Wearing……. (1952). Considered by British crime
writers as the best police procedural.
Colin Dexter
Chief Inspector Morse eg. The Last Bus to Woodstock (1975);
The Dead of Jericho (1981)
Rolando Hinojosa
Ask a Policeman. Set on the Texas border, beautifully written
by Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing
program at University of Texas at Austin.
Reginald Hill
Underworld (1988); Dead Heads (1983)
Martin Cruz Smith
Set in Cold War Russia. Gorky Park (1981)
J. J. Marric
Gideon’s Day (1955); The Pennycross Murders (1951)
H.R.F. Keating
English writer who created Inspector Ganesh Ghote from
Mumbai Police CID eg The Murder of the Maharajah (1980)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
13
Joseph Wambaugh
The Onion Field (1975); The Choirboys (1975)
Tony Hillerman
Navajo Indian police officers Jim Chee and Joe Leghorn. More
akin to heroes of James Fenimore Cooper than traditional
police sleuths. Dance Hall of the Dead (1973); A Thief of Time
(1988)
Lawrence Sanders
The First Deadly Sin (1973)
James McClure
set and written during apartheid in South Africa. Afrikaner Lt
Trompie Kramer and his Bantu assistant Sgt Mickey Zondi.
Terrific. The Steam Pig (1971); The Caterpillar Cop (1972)
P. D. James
Adam Dagliesh series eg A Taste for Death; Black Tower;
Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)
John Ball
In the Heat of the Night (1965)
Lawrence Treat
V as in Victim (1945)
Maurice Proctor
The Chief Inspector’s Statement
Henning Mankill
Return of the Dancing Master
Ed McBain
individual police officer replaced by the collective eg Cop
Hater (1956), Sadie When She Died (1972), Ice (1983).
Freeman Wills Crofts
Inspector Burnley eg The Cask (1920) but most famous for his
creation of Scotland Yard’s Joseph French eg. Inspector
French’s Greatest Cases (1925)
Henry Wade
Chief Inspector Poole The Duke of York’s Steps (1929);
Constable Guard Thyself (1934).
Ruth Rendell
Chief Inspector Wexford eg. From Doon with Death (1964)
Georges Simenon
Paris Police Judiciaire’s Jules Maigret eg. Maigret
Stonewalled
Josephine Tey
Inspector Alan Grant eg. The Man in the Queue (1929)
Chester Himes
set in black Harlem, NYC. Originally published in France eg
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Ian Rankin
“tartan” noir Inspector Rebus eg Knots and Crosses
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
14
Crime Writing Bestsellers
James Lee Burke
Dave Robicheaux novel set in Louisiana just after Hurricane
Katarina eg The Big Tin Blowdown; Hackberry Holland & Billy
Bob Holland novels set in Texas and Montana eg Rain Gods;
Feast Day of Fools; In the Moon of Red Ponies.
John Grisham
lawyer turned crime writer eg The Brethren, The Firm, The
Pelican Brief
Ruth Rendell (& Barbara
Vine)
Dick Francis
The Rottweiler; From Doon with Death; Harm Done
Frances Fyfield
Shadow Play; Blood From Stone
Val McDermid
The Mermaids Singing; Report for Murder
Jonathan Kellerman
CA child psychologist Alex Delaware eg When the Bough
Breaks (1985)
Minette Walters
The Scold’s Bride; The Ice House; Acid Row; The Sculptress
Erle Stanley Gardner
the man who wrote the Perry Mason series eg The Case of the
Velvet Claws (1933)
Lynda La Plante
Cold Blood; Cold Shoulder; Trial and Retribution
Laura Lippman
Tess Monaghan PI set in Baltimore MD eg. Baltimore Blues; In
Big Trouble
Elmore Leonard
Be Cool; 52 Pick-up; Freaky Deaky; Rum Punch; Get Shorty;
Pronto
James M. Cain
writer of very influential and popular books that were made
into quintessential film noirs in the 1940s in the US: Double
Indemnity; The Postman Always Rings Twice; Mildred Pierce
Patricia Highsmith
Strangers on a Train; The Talented Mr Ripley
John Le Carre
A Most Wanted Man (2008); A Spy Came in From the
Cold(1963); Smiley’s People (1980); Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,
Sailor (1974)
set in racing circles eg Risk; 10lb Penalty; Flying High; Wild
Horses
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
15
Ross Macdonald
Lew Archer is the detective eg The Moving Target; Black
Money; The Goodbye Look
James Lee Burke
Dave Robicheaux novel set in Louisiana just after Hurricane
Katarina eg The Big Tin Blowdown; Hackberry Holland & Billy
Bob Holland novels set in Texas and Montana eg Rain Gods;
Feast Day of Fools; In the Moon of Red Ponies.
John Grisham
lawyer turned crime writer eg The Brethren, The Firm, The
Pelican Brief
Ruth Rendell (& Barbara
Vine)
Dick Francis
The Rottweiler; From Doon with Death; Harm Done
Frances Fyfield
Shadow Play; Blood From Stone
Val McDermid
The Mermaids Singing; Report for Murder
Jonathan Kellerman
CA child psychologist Alex Delaware eg When the Bough
Breaks (1985)
Minette Walters
The Scold’s Bride; The Ice House; Acid Row; The Sculptress
Erle Stanley Gardner
the man who wrote the Perry Mason series eg The Case of the
Velvet Claws (1933)
Crime Writing
outside
set in racing circles eg Risk; 10lb Penalty; Flying High; Wild
Horses
the Anglo-French-American realm.
These are especially good for sharpening your examination of values, culture, justice.
Italy
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Leonardo Sciascia
Story (1989)
Umberto Eco
Carla Emilio Gadda
Mafia Vendetta (1961); The Day of the Owl (1961); A Simple
The Name of the Rose (1980)
That Awful Mess on Via Merulana (1957)
India
 Aravind Adiga
The White Tiger (2008)
Alstonville High Ext 1 Crime Writing
16
Scandinavia (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland) Very strong tradition of crime
writing in Scandanavia, however, hard-boiled has never taken hold in Sweden
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Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo their police officer Martin Beck fights crime and
corruption. 10 novels. Outstanding books. eg The Laughing Policeman.
Jan Ekstrom the master of the locked room mysteries in Sweden
Stig Trenter (the Trenter Syndrome describes his tendency to use the settings of
Stockholm)
Kerstin Ekman
Blackwater (1997)
Henning Mankill
new life into the police procedural eg Return of the Dancing
Master
Karim Fossum
Calling Out for You; The Indian Bride (2006)
Steg Larsson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Girl Who Played with Fire
Peter Hoeg
Smilla’s Sense of Snow
Arnaldur Indriadson The Draining Lake (2008); Hypothermia
Russia
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Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment (1866); The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
The Possessed (1872)
Chekhov’s short stories eg. “Swedish Match”
Dzhim Dollar (pseudonym of Marietta Shaginian) wrote so-called Pinkertonista based
on files of the American Pinkerton detective agency stories) Mess-Mend: Yankees in
Petrograd (1924).
Aleksandra Marinina, a former Moscow police officer, is the creator of the postSoviet period most famous detective: a female policewoman Lt Colonel Anastasia
Kamenskaya.
Boris Akunin eccentric Russian detective Erast Petrovich Fandorin eg Special
Assignments
Czech and Slovak Republics
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Karel Capek person who coined the word “robot” wrote novels very influenced by
Conan Doyle eg. R.U.R.; The War with the Newts.
Josef Skvorecky
wrote his detective Lt Boruvka. Regarded as dissident so he
had to flee to Canada to finish writing his stories. The Mournful Demeanour of Lt
Boruvka; The End of Lt Boruvka.
Jiri Marek
short story writer noted for his inventiveness and gentle comedy in
the crime writing genre
China
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 Qiu Xiaolong Death of a Red Heroine (2006); Red Mandarin Dress (2007)
Japan
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Edogawa Rampo
very influenced by Edgar Allan Poe eg Moju (1931); Blind Beast
Seicho Matsumoto Points and Lines
Shizuko Natsuki
female writer of the ‘social school’ Murder at Mt Fuji (1984);
The Third Lady (1990)
 Masako Togawa
 Natsuo Kirino
The Master Key (1962); The Lady Killer (1963)
lurid and bloody thriller whose heroine chops up bodies eg Out
(2003); Grotesque (2008)
 David Peace
a British writer who moved to Japan in 1996 to write his Red
Riding Quartet, then he began his Tokyo trilogy. These novels are set in post-WW2
American-occupied Japan and are based on real cases of that time: Tokyo Year Zero
(2007) & Occupied City (2009).
Argentine
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Jose Luis Borges
‘Death and Compass’ in Labyrinths (1962) is a reworking of a
G. K. Chesterton’s short story ‘The Wrong Shape’ (1911); ‘The Garden of the Forking
Paths’ in Ficciones (1962); Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi (1942)
Rudolfo Walsh
Operation Massacre (1957)
Mexico
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Paco Ignacio Taibo II detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne features in these
extraordinary Mexican novels eg An Easy Thing; Some Clouds
Vicente Lenero
The Bricklayers (1964)
Turkey
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Orhan Pamuk
recent Nobel Prize winner for Literature (2006) who writes
post-modern murder mysteries from multiple perspectives; crimes set in historical
Istanbul eg My Name is Red (1998); Snow
Israel
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Batya Gur
Israeli Chief Inspector Michael Ohayon eg Murder in Jerusalem;
Bethlehem Road Murder
Robert Rosenberg
Avril Cohen mystery eg An Accidental Murder
Don’t forget crime writing poetry!
Stephen Herrick
Cold Skin
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Dorothy Porter
The Monkey’s Mask
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