The good folks over at The Rap Sheet are running a contest asking folks to name their four favorite private eye novels. It seems like a fun idea, so I’m sending in my entry. But while I was working on that, it occurred to me that I could get a blog post out of it as well; especially if I didn’t limit it to just four.
So here’s a list, in no particular order, of my ten favorite private eye novels, with some comments. The ones I included in my list for The Rap Sheet are marked with a (*). If nothing else, I hope this stimulates some discussion.
- California Fire and Life
, Don Winslow. (*)
- Free Fall
, Robert Crais. What I love most about this book is that the heart of the plot is a love story about two people who wind up walking through the fire. They don’t come out without scars, but Crais leaves you with the feeling they came out stronger for the experience.
- Gone, Baby, Gone
, Dennis Lehane.
- Promised Land
, Robert B. Parker. Here’s what I’ve said about this novel previously.
- When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
, Lawrence Block. (*) A sad, beautiful, elegiac private eye novel. I’m glad the series didn’t end with this one, but if it had, it couldn’t have ended any better.
- Pale Gray for Guilt
, John D. MacDonald. (*) More than just a stand-in for all of the Travis McGee novels, this is my favorite because:
- It is a very personal novel; McGee is out for revenge on the person who killed his friend, and to protect his friend’s widow.
- The Christmas setting. I like to pick this up and re-read it every Christmas, so I can get in the mood for the season.
- It is a novel about dealing with loss.
- It features Meyer, who I like almost as much as McGee. More to the point, it features Meyer in a key role, and makes good use of his specific talents.
- Farewell, My Lovely
, Dashiell Hammett Of course I know this was a Raymond Chandler novel; that was a copy and paste error. I know this is kind of a conventional choice, but there’s just something about Moose Malloy, and especially the last line of the novel, that gets to me.
- The Maltese Falcon
, Dashiell Hammett. (*) Another kind of conventional choice. There are people who would say that I picked this because of my romantic attachment to Bogart and the movie. There may be some truth to that. But the book existed before the movie did, and I picked this one (rather than Red Harvest
) because, I think, this is the Hammett book most concerned with honor; what it means, and how to live with honor in a world without honor.
- The Red Box
, Rex Stout. Some other folks have cited books as stand-ins for entire series. This is my stand-in for all the Wolfe books. I have fond memories of some of the other books (Too Many Cooks
and The Black Mountain
in particular), but those are atypical books. The Red Box is the most typical of the Wolfe books; all the routine is there, but it comes late enough in the series that it feels more polished than the early books.
- The Far Side of the Dollar
, Ross Macdonald. I’m not as well read in the Archer books as I would like to be, but I felt like he belonged on the list. Of the Archer books I’ve read, this is the one that made the strongest impression on me.
Honorable mention: I considered putting The Fools in Town Are on Our Side
, by Ross Thomas, on this list. In the end, though, I decided that as much as I like that novel, it isn’t what I’d consider a private eye novel. I’m not sure what to call it, but I don’t think it fits that category.
The subject line is a hattip to Lawrence, who complained last time I quoted Mr. Costello’s song that I didn’t use that line.
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