Here are my favorite crime novels, ten at a time, divided into 10 posts. I followed the following rules:
- Included are mysteries, detective novels, legal thrillers, hard-boiled novels, and noir novels. In other words, as all-inclusive as possible.
- Only one book per author.
- Only novels, no short stories.
- Only books from (more or less) the last 100 years, with an emphasis on recent novels.
- All selected novels are equal, so no counting down from 100 to 1 - I give the books in alphabetical order.
- Other lists show an unhealthy preponderance of Anglophone novels, and I have tried to restore some balance by including as many interesting examples from other cultures as I could find.
- In the case of overly famous authors or books, I have skipped them and tried to find others.
- As you can see from this list, I am not a fan of puzzle detectives: I prefer mysteries with a strong atmosphere, interesting characters, and a colorful background, and I don't mind if the puzzle is a bit weak.
1. A Yi, A Perfect Crime (2012, China)
This novel paints a sordid portrait of contemporary China, and in this respect reminded me of "Villain" by Yoshida Shuichi, which does the same for contemporary Japan's alienated society - neither are true "crime" novels, but rather books in which contemporary society is viewed through the lens of crime). The protagonist is a 19-year-old nihilistic youth who is completely unlikable and incomprehensible, like a strange animal. After graduating from high school, he murders a classmate by luring her to his aunt's apartment (where he lives), stabbing her 37 times, and then shoving the body into the washing machine. There is no motivation at all for this senseless murder, except that he is fed up and bored with life and society. He goes on the run with no prospect of escape, but being chased by the police at least gives him a sense of purpose. Eventually he is caught. He then frustrates the authorities by offering no motive for his monstrous act. But this bleak portrait of youthful nihilism in China is only half of the novel. What follows is a detailed description of the trial, including the appeal to a higher court, where the mother has hired a shrewd underling and sold her house to pay a large sum of money to the mother of the murdered girl, so that a plea for leniency will be possible. This is the most satirical part of the book, exposing the hypocrisy of society (not just a Chinese problem!). By the way, the Chinese title "xiàmiàn wǒ gāi gàn xiē shénma" translates as "So, what should I do next?2. ADAIR, Gilbert: The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006, Britain)
A witty pastiche parody of the tired Agatha Christie-esque English country house murder mystery of the 1930s (even the title is a rip-off of Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd"), full of in-jokes and references to the conventions of the genre. But besides being a parody, it also works on the level of a classic whodunit, with a period snowed-in country house setting, a cast of equally suspicious guests, two seemingly unfathomable murders, and an ingenious solution so clever that it overcomes the reader's feeling that it is all highly improbable.When one of the guests at a Boxing Day party is found shot to death in an attic (in a closed room), an outsider - retired Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Trubshawe, who happens to live in the neighborhood - is called in as a sort of Poirot stand-in. The deceased is a nasty gossip journalist who fought with and was hated by everyone at the party (he was also a gatecrasher). We get the usual interviews with the guests, all of whom are suspects, and gradually various back stories are revealed. One guest is the formidable mystery writer Evadne Mount (a Christie stand-in?), and it is quite satisfying that it is she, rather than the Scotland Yard professional, who finally puts all the pieces together. As the story unfolds, it is full of borrowings and echoes, red herrings and well-hidden clues, and references to familiar mysteries. All in all, a delightful entertainment.
3. ADLER-OLSEN, Jussi: The Keeper of Lost Causes (aka Mercy, 2007, Denmark)
A novel about second chances. Homicide detective Carl Mørck, the all-too-familiar figure of the burnt-out detective, has bungled an arrest and killed two colleagues - for which he takes the blame. As a result, he is "promoted" to a new department, Department Q, to deal with hopeless cases that have been shelved. His first assignment concerns the missing politician Merete Lynggaard, who disappeared five years ago and is presumed dead. But she isn't... not yet...
The daily life in the police department, the office politics, the procedures and the investigations are very realistic. The most interesting character in this dark novel is Mørck's seemingly inept assistant Assad, a Syrian refugee with no social skills at all, but with amazing insight. So we have the setup of the lone cop and his trusty - and exotic - sidekick solving a terrible crime and bringing justice, a nice variation on the usual police procedural theme. The book is not flawless - the dramatic showdown at the end is a bit much, and the motivation for the crime is based on revenge so outrageously improbable that it almost spoils the whole novel - but it is a very entertaining read and the start of a series that stands out among the many other Nordic noir mysteries.
The daily life in the police department, the office politics, the procedures and the investigations are very realistic. The most interesting character in this dark novel is Mørck's seemingly inept assistant Assad, a Syrian refugee with no social skills at all, but with amazing insight. So we have the setup of the lone cop and his trusty - and exotic - sidekick solving a terrible crime and bringing justice, a nice variation on the usual police procedural theme. The book is not flawless - the dramatic showdown at the end is a bit much, and the motivation for the crime is based on revenge so outrageously improbable that it almost spoils the whole novel - but it is a very entertaining read and the start of a series that stands out among the many other Nordic noir mysteries.
4. ALEAS, Richard: Songs of Innocence (2007, USA)
"Songs of Innocence" is the second novel by Richard Aleas, the pen name of Charles Ardai, the founder and editor of Hard Case Crime. The book is a loose sequel to his earlier work, "Little Girl Lost," but the necessary information is repeated, so it is not necessary to read the first novel before this one. Although set in a hard-boiled noir environment, the protagonist is a soft-boiled young man who works as a teaching assistant in a writing program at Columbia. One of the participants in the program is Dorrie, who pays for her tuition at the university by providing sexual services. At the beginning of the novel, he finds her body in the bathtub of her apartment, an apparent suicide, but since he knows her well enough to be sure that she would never kill herself, he is convinced that she was murdered. With some private eye experience from a previous job, he decides to find her killer and is led into an underworld of massage parlors and Asian bathhouses where he must contend with vicious Hungarian gangsters. As he desperately tries to solve the mystery of Dorrie's death, one of the gangsters is murdered and a nationwide manhunt ensues for him as the prime suspect. The downward spiral leads to a powerful climax, but again, not a conventional one: the final powerful blow comes when he learns the shocking truth about Dorrie, an ending that is darker than dark.
5. ARJOUNI, Jakob (Jakob Bothe): Happy Birthday, Turk! (1985, Germany)
German crime writer Arjouni is best known for his Kayankaya series, which features private eye Kemal Kayankaya and is set in Frankfurt am Main. Most of Arjouni's works are written with a keen eye for the experiences of the outsider in German society. Kayankaya was born in Turkey but adopted at a very young age and raised by a German family. Despite his outward appearance, he is culturally German, and contrary to the expectations of those he meets, he is actually rather unfamiliar with what it means to be Turkish. He only speaks German - so he's a "Turk" who doesn't speak Turkish and is caught between cultures. Debauched, hard-drinking and self-loathing, Kayankaya is a hard-boiled detective in the American mold of Hammett and Chandler. The story of Happy Birthday, Turk! centers on the stabbing death of a Turkish laborer on the steps of his "junkie prostitute" girlfriend's apartment building. The case is brought to Kayankaya by the murdered man's wife after the police are unwilling or unable to investigate in depth. So Kayankaya plunges into the seedy underworld of Frankfurt's red-light district, overindulging in Scotch and caffeine, making enemies on both sides of the law, and slowly gathering pieces of the puzzle.
6. ARNALDUR Indriðason: Jar City (1997, Iceland)
Inspector Erlendur is your archetypal Nordic noir detective: while searching for criminals, he must also face his own demons. He is in his 50s, long divorced, out of touch with his ex-wife and son, and with a daughter, Eva Lind, who suffers from varying degrees of drug addiction. In this novel, she is pregnant and still using; she flits in and out of Erlendur's life angrily, as if crying out for help. The weather in the novel is always cold, dark, and either raining or snowing (winter is Erlendur's season, not summer).The body of a 70-year-old man, who has been hit on the head with a glass ashtray, is found in an apartment in Norðurmýri. The only clues are a photo of a young girl's grave and a cryptic note left on the body. Detective Erlendur discovers that the victim was accused of a violent rape some forty years ago, but was never convicted. The man turns out to be a nasty piece of work indeed, and Erlendur is disgusted to discover that he and his associates may be linked to other rapes and deaths of young women in the past. And then there is the suffocating, moldy smell in the man's apartment...
The novel won the Scandinavian crime writers' Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel in 2002, and was made into a movie of the same name. What I like about this novel (and other books by Arnaldur) is that the plot is neither too daring nor too unrealistic; the story spins a thread that connects sensitive issues: sex crimes and the problem of the information society, where the genetic ID of individuals has become the property of private companies.
7. BEER, Alex (Daniela Larcher): The Second Rider (2017, Austria)
Vienna in 1919, after the First World War, is a desolate and run-down place. The Habsburg Empire is a fading memory, and most of Vienna's remaining population survives by its wits, living hand-to-mouth in a city rife with crime, prostitution, and grotesquely wounded beggars - many of them soldiers returning from the war to find a city very different from the one they left. Poverty is rampant, and the only functioning market is the black market, which operates (literally) underground, using the sewers (which play such a large role in The Third Man) to store and transport goods. Shortages of essential goods create countless opportunities for unscrupulous operators.
August Emmerich is a police inspector in the city. Emmerich is determined to join the Vienna Major Crimes Unit, and he's more than willing to break the rules in pursuit of his ambition. He is also a war veteran who uses alcohol and heroin to control the pain of a war wound. He and his junior partner, Ferdinand Winter, are involved in both tracking down black market smugglers and investigating a series of murders in the city (which their superiors have labeled suicides). The two cases inevitably overlap - with war crimes committed on the Eastern Front, in Galicia, coming back to haunt post-war society. In addition to being an excellent thriller, this novel is also a meticulously researched piece of historical fiction (comparable to the "Gereon Rath novels" by German author Volker Kutscher, set in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis). Post-WW1 Vienna is beautifully recreated. Alex Beer is the pen name of Daniela Larcher (1977), who was born in Lustenau (in the western tip of Austria) and studied archaeology in Vienna. Larcher is the author of ten thrillers, including four in the "August Emmerich" series.
August Emmerich is a police inspector in the city. Emmerich is determined to join the Vienna Major Crimes Unit, and he's more than willing to break the rules in pursuit of his ambition. He is also a war veteran who uses alcohol and heroin to control the pain of a war wound. He and his junior partner, Ferdinand Winter, are involved in both tracking down black market smugglers and investigating a series of murders in the city (which their superiors have labeled suicides). The two cases inevitably overlap - with war crimes committed on the Eastern Front, in Galicia, coming back to haunt post-war society. In addition to being an excellent thriller, this novel is also a meticulously researched piece of historical fiction (comparable to the "Gereon Rath novels" by German author Volker Kutscher, set in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis). Post-WW1 Vienna is beautifully recreated. Alex Beer is the pen name of Daniela Larcher (1977), who was born in Lustenau (in the western tip of Austria) and studied archaeology in Vienna. Larcher is the author of ten thrillers, including four in the "August Emmerich" series.
8. BILAL, Parker: The Golden Scales: (2012, Sudan / Britain)
Parker Bilal is the pseudonym under which Jamal Mahjoub, a writer of British and Sudanese parents, writes crime novels. He has also published eight literary novels under his own name. "The Golden Scales" was the first crime novel by this author. It is the beginning of a series set in Cairo, featuring former Sudanese police inspector Makana, who was forced to flee to Cairo and now struggles as a private detective, living on a flimsy houseboat and just scraping by. But then he is hired by the richest businessman in Cairo to find the missing star player of the soccer team sponsored by the corrupt mogul. In a second simultaneous case, Makana is asked by the Cairo police to help solve the murder of an Englishwoman who visits Cairo every year to search for her daughter, who disappeared seventeen years ago when she was only four years old. These two mysteries will take Makana into the treacherous underbelly of his adopted city. He will also come face to face with an old enemy from his own past. The novel vividly describes Cairo as a feverish tangle of the old and the new, the super-rich and the desperately poor, with inequality and corruption everywhere. A great portrait of the teeming city and its many problems.
9. BIOY CASARES, Adolfo & OCAMPO, Sylvia: Where There’s Love, There’s Hate (1946, Argentine)
A "Gilbert Adair-like" mystery, a stylish postmodern pastiche that pokes fun at the conventions of the genre. The narrator is the stupid and vain doctor Humberto Huberman, a devotee of homeopathy (and therefore addicted to arsenic pills), who travels to the isolated seaside resort of Bosque del Mar to work on his screenplay - an adaptation of Petronius' Satyricon set in present-day Argentina. On the beach, he meets Mary and her sister Emilia and their fiancé, Dr. Cornejo, as well as eleven-year-old Miguel. Coincidentally, he already knows Mary: "It's so hard to recognize people in bathing suits..." Then Mary almost drowns in the sea, Emilia and Mary argue, Emilia cries, a sandstorm shakes the hotel, and the next morning Mary is dead: strychnine. Who did it? Of course, everyone is a suspect, has a motive, and had the opportunity. Clues are laid, relationships are confused, the lovers suspect each other. But it's just a literary game full of allusions and ironic jokes, which doesn't even pretend to be real anymore...
10. BLACK, Benjamin (John Banville): Christine Falls (2007, Ireland)
The first in a series of mystery novels about a consultant pathologist at the Dublin City Morgue, the massively built but brusquely amiable Dr. Quirke. Set in Dublin in the 1950s, they were written by Irish author John Banville (1950) under the pen name "Benjamin Black". John Banville is known for his precise prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and the dark humor of his (often immoral) narrators. Christine Falls is set in the buttoned-down Dublin of the 1950s, as the author remembers it from his early youth, "a poverty-stricken but beautiful city, dingy and ramshackle, with a melancholy beauty. Benjamin Black's Dublin is full of fog, coal dust, whiskey fumes, and stale cigarette smoke. His protagonist is a troubled man, hard-drinking and intolerant, a damaged man in many ways - more at home among the corpses in his pathologist's lab than among other people. He lives alone, and his depression is exacerbated by his longing for his dead wife's sister and his difficult relationship with his daughter, Phoebe. Banville was inspired to write these novels by Georges Simenon - not the Maigret books, but the "romans durs", such as Dirty Snow, Monsieur Monde Vanishes or Tropic Moon. Banville thought these were masterpieces of existential fiction, far better and less self-consciously literary than anything by Sartre or Camus. They inspired Banville to try his hand at crime fiction, and he has done a splendid job. Again, we have a life story of the protagonist, especially in the first few novels of the series, so it is best to read them in order of publication, starting with Christine Falls.Best Crime Novels 7
Best Crime Novels 8
Best Crime Novels 9
Best Crime Novels 10