Best crime novels of the century

From the Rap Sheet -- again

Okay, I haven't worked out yet if the python was an April Fool's Joke or not, but this is such an amazing post from the Rap Sheet, that I reproduce it in full.  With comments.  Where appropriate.

It Was the Best of Crimes: Critics’ Choice 

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 02:11 PM PDT

In the summer of 2000, British critics H.R.F. “Harry” Keating and Mike Ripley were commissioned by the London Times newspaper to conduct a survey of the best crime novels (mysteries/spy stories/thrillers) of the 20th century, choosing one per year, 1900-1999. This, said the two critics, couldn’t be done so neatly, but what they would do was select 100 books to represent a century which began with the recall of Sherlock Holmes and ended with the death of Inspector Morse.

In the end, Ripley cheated a bit by nominating 101 titles to include Keating’s own The Perfect Murder from 1964, which modesty had forbidden its author from suggesting.

The survey, with a brief justification for each title, was published in a 16-page supplement to The Times on Saturday, September 30, 2000. The basic list of titles selected is republished here for the first time as a tribute to author and scholar Harry Keating, who died earlier this week at age 84. (Titles and years are as when published in the UK -- and I interpolate my thoughts, where I have any thoughts at all.)

1902: The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Yes, brilliant)

1903: The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers (Have it; have trouble reading it.)

1905: The Four Just Men – Edgar Wallace (Oh yes, brilliant again)

1907: The Thinking Machine – Jacques Futrelle (Never heard of it)

1908: The Circular Staircase – Mary Roberts Rinehart (Remember reading that, and it was good)

1911: The Innocence of Father Brown – G.K. Chesterton (Oh yes, one of those books you remember ..)

1912: Trent’s Last Case – E.C. Bentley

1915: The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan (Unreadable now, unfortunately)

1918: Uncle Abner – Melville Davisson Post

1926: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie (This woman was so-o-o reliable, always good)

1928: Ashenden (The British Agent) – W. Somerset Maugham (Funny, that - thought I had read everything of his, but this is unfamiliar)

1929: Little Caesar – W.R. Burnett

1929: Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett

1930: The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett (Tough times demanded tough sleuths, I guess)

1930: The Documents in the Case – Dorothy L. Sayers, Robert Eustace

1931: Malice Aforethought – Francis Iles (Who?)

1932: Before the Fact – Francis Iles

1933: The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers (Oh yes, was it that long ago? Great book, even 80 years later)

1934: Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie (See above, but this was one of her greatest)

1934: The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain (Saw the movie, too violent for me; a hint of the Stephen King books to come)

1934: Death of a Ghost – Margery Allingham (Another great, reliable writer)

1935: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy

1935: The Hollow Man – John Dickson Carr

1935: The League of Frightened Men – Rex Stout

1936: The Wheel Spins – Ethel Lina White

1938: Lament for a Maker – Michael Innes

1938: The Beast Must Die – Nicholas Blake

1939: The Mask of Dimitrios – Eric Ambler (Yes!  Chilling radio serial made from it)

1939: Ten Little Niggers (And Then There Were None) – Agatha Christie (Politically incorrect, dear, but great in its day - and a good movie, too)

1939: Rogue Male – Geoffrey Household (Totally brilliant book, still very apt.)

1940: A Surfeit of Lampreys (Death of a Peer) – Ngaio Marsh

1940: The Bride Wore Black – Cornell Woolrich

1942: Calamity Town – Ellery Queen (This guy made mysteries deliberately commercial -- the modern world owes him a lot)

1943: The High Window – Raymond Chandler

1944: Green for Danger – Christianna Brand

1946: The Big Clock – Kenneth Fearing

1947: The Moving Toyshop – Edmund Crispin

1948: Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly –  John Franklin Bardin

1949: My Friend Maigret – Georges Simenon (Tried too hard to emulate Poirot)

1949: The Asphalt Jungle – W.R. Burnett

1950: Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith (Oh yes, this one was great)

1950: Smallbone Deceased – Michael Gilbert (Was he the first lawyer to write mysteries?  Did them very well indeed -- teethed on his short stories in Argosy)

1950: The Stain on the Snow – Georges Simenon

1951: The Daughter of Time – Josephine Tey (Another one of those books that affects all your reading from then on -- wonderfully well researched, the first book that made me think deeply about history)

1952: The Tiger in the Smoke – Margery Allingham (Another superb choice)

1952: Last Seen Wearing – Hilary Waugh  (Great writer; not the book of his I would have chosen)

1953: Five Roundabouts to Heaven – John Bingham

1953: The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler

1953: The Burglar – David Goodis

1956: The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith

1956: Mystery Stories – Stanley Ellin

1957: From Russia with Love – Ian Fleming  (You have to be joking!  Was 1957 that bad?)

1959: The Manchurian Candidate – Richard Condon (Great book, watchable movie)

1962: The Ipcress File – Len Deighton

1963: Gun Before Butter – Nicolas Freeling

1963: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré (Was I the only person in the universe who found this book unreadable?)

1964: The Deep Blue Good-bye – John D. MacDonald (Why choose this one?  They were all the same, and they all did well to pass long airplane flights away)

1964: Pop. 1280 – Jim Thompson

1964: The Expendable Man – Dorothy B. Hughes

1965: Black Money – Ross Macdonald

1967: Roseanna – Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloo

1968: Making Good Again – Lionel Davidson

1968: The Glass-Sided Ants Nest – Peter Dickinson (I tried so hard to read this book ...)

1969: Blind Man with a Pistol – Chester Himes

1970: Jack’s Return Home – Ted Lewis

1971: The Day of the Jackal – Frederick Forsyth (A whole new genre, and OMG he did it well)

1972: The Friends of Eddie Coyle – George V. Higgins

1972: Sadie When She Died – Ed McBain (Why this one?  They were all pretty much the same, like watching a TV series.  Mind you, all his Ed McBain books were Evan Hunter lite)

1972: The Players and the Game – Julian Symons (Brilliant writer -- I was addicted to him at the time)

1974: Other Paths to Glory – Anthony Price

1976: The Wrong Case – James Crumley

1976: A Demon in My View – Ruth Rendell

1976: A Morbid Taste for Bones – Ellis Peters (Yes, still very readable)

1977: A Judgement in Stone – Ruth Rendell

1977: Laidlaw – William McIlvanney

1978: SS-GB – Len Deighton

1979: Whip Hand – Dick Francis (Another reliable writer -- don't stick with just this one, as the other years were just as good)

1979: Skinflick – Joseph Hansen

1979: Kill Claudio – P.M. Hubbard  (Why three 1979s?)

1981: Red Dragon – Thomas Harris

1981: Thus Was Adonis Murdered – Sarah Caudwell

1982: The False Inspector Dew – Peter Lovesey

1982: Indemnity Only – Sara Paretsky

1982: The Artful Egg – James McClure

1984: Stick – Elmore Leonard

1984: Miami Blues – Charles Willeford

1986: A Perfect Spy – John Le Carré

1986: A Taste for Death – P.D. James

1987: The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy

1988: Double Whammy – Carl Hiaasen

1989: Lonely Hearts – John Harvey

1990: Postmortem – Patricia Cornwell (Another new take on the genre -- and only take it if you have a strong stomach for ersatz pathology)

1991: Devil in a Blue Dress – Walter Mosley

1991: Dirty Tricks – Michael Dibdin

1993: The Sculptress – Minette Walters

1993: In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead – James Lee Burke (One of the first literary mystery writers)

1995: The Mermaids Singing – Val McDermid

1998: On Beulah Height – Reginald Hill

1998: The Hanging Garden – Ian Rankin

1999: The Remorseful Day – Colin Dexter

2000?  2001? etc.?  And why not Elizabeth George?

Suggestions welcome.