Mystery Novels I Love
I love mystery novels. In fact, there are times that I put all other reading aside and read them compulsively, one after another, until I’m satiated. You might even say that I’m addicted to mysteries the way some people are addicted to chocolate or ice cream.
I’ve thought about why I like mysteries so much, and I’ve come up with a few answers. I like the puzzle aspect of a good mystery—trying to figure out who did it before the author reveals it. I start putting clues together from page one and feel a great sense of validation when I’m right about the solution and only a minor disappointment if I’m wrong. I also like the characters, world, and mood of well-written mysteries. Perhaps most of all, I like experiencing the suspense and, ultimately, the feeling that justice has triumphed when the villain is found out and punished (would that it were always so in life).
As with many other mystery buffs, my favorite classic mystery writer is Raymond Chandler. Chandler wrote seven-and-a-half novels that, along with the Sam Spade mysteries of his predecessor Dashiell Hammett, established the hard-boiled detective as a staple in mystery fiction. I’ve read all of Chandler’s novels several times, except Poodle Springs, his unfinished novel, which I read only once (it’s disappointing as well as unfinished; contemporary mystery writer Robert Parker has completed a version that’s been well received and that I’m looking forward to reading).
My favorite Chandler novels are The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye, but The Lady in the Lake is up there, too. Even Chandler’s more minor novels, Playback, The High Window, and The Little Sister, are rewarding for his unerring prose, caustic dialogue, and vivid characters, especially Chandler’s cynical but romantic white-knight detective, Philip Marlowe, who appears in and narrates all of the novels.
In a very different tradition—the “British cozy,” a mystery genre that she helped to create—is the quintessentially English Agatha Christie, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records , is the best-selling novelist of all time. Of course sales are not necessarily a measure of quality, and taste is, by definition, subjective. Chandler had no use for Christie, (he also had no use for another of my favorites, Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes), but in my opinion, Christie, at her best, devised brilliant plots, created intriguing characters, and wrote crisp, intelligent prose. If all Christie had done was to bring into the world her two iconic detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, it would have been enough to guarantee her immortality as an author of mysteries, but she also wrote excellent mystery novels like Toward Zero and Ordeal by Innocence in which neither Poirot nor Marple appears.
Not all of her work is equally high in quality, however. Some of it is marred by stereotypes, prejudices, and a lack of sufficient editing, and, later in her career, her often acute observation of behavior and social mores sometimes became stodgy (when she wrote about “Mod London” of the 1960s, for example). But looking at her work in its entirety, her output of ingenious, entertaining mystery novels is astounding.
If you’ve never read Agatha Christie, I recommend starting with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced Hercule Poirot, The Murder at the Vicarage, the first novel to feature Jane Marple (who appeared earlier in short stories), and then, for a change of pace, Toward Zero and Ordeal by Innocence. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that for many Christie fans, And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd stand as her greatest achievements.
If you like Chandler, I also recommend his worthiest successor in the hard-boiled tradition, Ross Macdonald, author of, among other works, The Barbarous Coast, The Galton Case, and The Goodbye Look, all featuring his private detective Lew Archer.
Who are your favorite classic mystery novelists and which of their novels do you like best?
