CRIME SCRAPS: FIFTY PLUS ONE GREATEST CRIME WRITERS FROM THE TELEGRAPH

by Uriah Robinson

CRIME SCRAPS

A few comments and thoughts about crime books set on the mainland of Europe, with titbits about real eurocrime. We hear so much about crime in the USA that many people imagine that Europe is a crime free zone. In crime fiction Europe has become a real challenger to the Americans, but unfortunately real life crime especially in Britain is increasing as well.

Norm, your pithy post is a fine indictment of this ridiculous exercise. This could have been stimulating and fun, but as it is the list is silly, a waste of time, and an insult to readers of crime fiction and of the newspaper. The subhead of the article says they chose their "favourite crime writers of all time", while the first paragraph says this is a list of "the 50 great (sic) crime writers of all time." This is not at all the same thing, so which is it? I think it's firstly a list of authors they had an idea, sometimes rightly, sometimes not, ought to be included: Dickens, Poe, Collins, and then on to the usual Golden Agers -- Knox, Bentley, Christie, Marsh, Carr, Sayers, Allingham. Then they chucked in a few they vaguely remembered enjoying years ago: Crispin, Innes, Gilbert. For most of the rest they seem to have skipped to contemporary authors they happen to have read and liked, and we see that they rather gravitate toward the private investigator, the hard-boiled, and borderline thrillers. In short, I see a mode of 'thought' here: we have to mention those (19th.c); writers on crime fiction always mention these (Golden Age); we vaguely remember enjoying that back in our salad days; and these are the recent ones we ourselves happen to read and enjoyed. And thus, no Rankin, Lovesey, Vargas, Dexter, Barnard...but Thompson, Mina, Larrson, Higgins, Spillane, Grady, Crais, Lawton.... British authors currently writing get very short shrift indeed. Continental writers don't do particularly well, but I was a bit surprised these critical cream-faced loons (thank God for WS at times like this) included any. Two last things. A list of fifty is not long enough for an exercise of this sort -- it wasn't long enough for H.R.F. Keating 20 years ago. And I'm not sure it's a coincidence that all the titles cited are available from Telegraph Books, as they point out at the end.

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