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Favourite mystery/detective novels

Mojo said:
Second-hand bookshops are fun. :)
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Sniff! Try being in Pattaya! The only place that does 2nd hand books in English:

A) always has forty copies each of the last two years of Beach Reading Best Sellers.
B) nothing else

I think the owner set the place up so he can horde books in his flat upstairs. Either that or I'm the only literate person in town. Luckily I had a stock of unread books from a couple of buying sprees in HK before I left.

(Oh, and we have good bookstores for un-used/new. I just don't want to pay full list price for some books, particularly ones I've read.)
 
My favorites are:

Michael Connelly. the Harry Bosch books - LA cop, always fighting the bureaucracy.
Robert Crais, the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike books - kind of a West coast Spenser.
Michael McGarrity, the Kevin Kearney books - Itinerant investigator, set in New Mexico.

These are ones I haven't seen mentioned above.
 
Hound Of the Baskervilles by Conan Doyle
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Maltese Falcon by Dashell Hammet.
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
Calamity Town by Ellery Queen
Too Many Clients by Rex Stout
 
Some that I haven't seen mentioned here that are worth a look:

SS Van Dine's Philo Vance series. The detective as dilettante. Earlier books in this series are better.

Bill James' Harpur & Iles. Gritty and funny at the same time. Try Panicking Ralph.

John Lescroart's Dismas Hardy series. The "mystery" aspect is a little weak (I have usually identified the killer by about halfway through the novel), but the characters are terrific. Hardy's buddy Abe Glitzky also has his own series.
 
I mentioned Lescroart before. I like his characters, too. Most of the ones I like are because of the characters.
 
No worries, Brainster, I was agreeing with you, not having a go at you for missing it. :)
 
I've read Fox Evil and The Breaker by Minette Walters recently and enjoyed them a lot.

On the other hand I started reading my first ever PD James and gave it up as damn near unreadable. "Turgid" was the word that sprang to mind.
 
I must add VanDine to my reading list, I've read a couple of them.
Ah, Sandford, where else do you get openings like this:
VIRGIL FLOWERS WAS SITTING on a bale of hay on a jacked-up snowmobile trailer behind Bob’s Bad Boy Barbeque & Bar in North Mankato, Minnesota, watching four Minnesota farm girls duke it out in the semifinals of the 5B’s Third International Beach Volleyball Tournament.
The contestants were not the skinny, sun-blasted beach-blanketbingo chicks who played in places like Venice Beach, or down below the bluffs at Laguna and La Jolla. Not at all. These women were white as paper in January, six-three and six-four, and ran close to two hundred pounds each, in their plus-sized bikinis. They’d spent the early parts of their lives carrying heifers around barnyards, and jumping up and down from haylofts; they could get up in the air.
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Lolly said:
I mentioned Lescroart before. I like his characters, too. Most of the ones I like are because of the characters.
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I'll second this. As in, I like his stuff and I also missed you posting about it :)
 
I particularly like Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series. Having watched the television series, I can hear John Thaw's and Kevin Whately's voices when I read the books.

Also recently discovered an old Australian detective series featuring Scobie Malone, which I really enjoyed. The author is Jon Cleary, and he puts a bit of black humour into his writing.
 
In no particular order (many have already been listed):

Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks series
Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford series
Reginal Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe series (and the TV adaptations)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and the Jeremy Brett TV adaptations)
Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series
Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series
James Lee Burke 's Dave Robicheaux series
Tony Hillerman's Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn series
Michael Connelly ' s Harry Bosch series
Ian Rankin 's John Rebus series
Peter Lovesey 's Peter Diamond series
Robert B Parker's Spenser series (the first dozen or so, and Avery Brooks as Hawk on TV)
Marcia Muller's Sharon Mccone series
Bill Pronaini's Nameless Detective series
Donna Leon' s Commissario Guido Brunetti series
Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series
Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone series
Alexander Mccall Smith 's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series
Ellis Peters's Cadfael series (and the TV adaptaion
Henning Mankell's Wallander series
Arnaldur Indridason's Inspector Erlendur Sveinnson series
Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer series
Robert Crais's Cole and Pike series
Steven Saylor - Ancient Rome series
C. J. Box's Joe Pickett series
Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck sieres
M. C. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth

I just joined GoodReads and preparing this list made me realize I really need to add them to my 'Read' list
 
I've read a lot of stuff by Robert B. Parker, Stuart Woods, Robert Barnard, Carl Hiaasen, two or three stories by James Patterson, and I just finished one by John Grisham. I intend to get into some of the writers from my father's generation like Dashiel Hammett and Earl Stanley Gardner. Dad was a big reader and those were among his favorite authors. And of course Agatha Christie.
 
fleabeetle said:
I'd recommend -- with a couple of reservations -- Val McDermid. She's written a considerable number of IMO excellent mystery novels, usually with British settings -- comprising a few series (Kate Brannigan; Lindsay Gordon; Tony Hill and Carol Jordan), and quite a number of stand-alones.

The author's being gay; and having a lot of her characters gay; would seem to me to have the effect of more harping on matters of sexual politics, than I'd really want in any whodunnit. Also, in the last two / three years, the plots; and especially denouements; of McDermid's novels, have struck me as tending toward the preposterously far-fetched. I do wonder whether she's losing her grip; or perhaps, just churning out too many books.
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I have that problem with Coldwell. I love Reginal Hill's Wieldy but loathe Coldwell's plethora of bull-dyke everything (a form of wish-fulfillment, I guess), which smacks of fixation and has no balance.

Feminazis irk me.
 
McDermid may be catering to the "Tv people" with the far-fetched stuff. I read one book recently and didn't like it much, but I'm listening to an audiobook and really enjoying that one.

Another couple of names that may not have been mentioned (we're getting quite a list), Richard North Patterson, Lisa Scottoline. Scott Turow is another "Grisham-y" type. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg, Steve Martini. I can't remember the stories or which were good, but all were readable, from memory.
 
Brainster said:
Some that I haven't seen mentioned here that are worth a look:

SS Van Dine's Philo Vance series. The detective as dilettante. Earlier books in this series are better.

Bill James' Harpur & Iles. Gritty and funny at the same time. Try Panicking Ralph.

John Lescroart's Dismas Hardy series. The "mystery" aspect is a little weak (I have usually identified the killer by about halfway through the novel), but the characters are terrific. Hardy's buddy Abe Glitzky also has his own series.
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The First four of the Philo Vance novles are worth reading, after that the quality goes downhill fast.
And that Philo Vance comes off like an obnoxious jerk much of the time is not a plus. Ogden Nash said it right in his verse:

"Philo Vance Needs A Kick In The Pants".

Van Dyne was going for Lord Peter Whimsey type charecter and,IMHO, pretty much failed. Lord Peter was very likable and not at all a snob, Vance had none of those qualaties.
The first four novels are worth reading because of the clever plots,but after the plots go downhill the books become almost unreadable.
 
Holmes, definitely Holmes. Conan Doyle mostly, but I've quite enjoyed the Anthony Horowitz House of Silk as well as several other pastiches.

I'm currently reading through Laurie King's Beekeeper series, and apart from the slight creepy old man vibe I get from it, I'm enjoying her take on the Holmes universe. Up to #9 in the series with three to go after it, I think.

Aside from that... well, I don't read mysteries all that much, so I can really only point to Jan Burke's series about a reporter named Irene Kelly, plus the rather cutesy but still fun series about a former reporter named Qwilleran with his two Siamese cats named Koko and Yum-Yum, where the character who invariably points Qwilleran in the right direction is his apparently hyper-intelligent cat Koko; I think the series is called "The Cat Who...", but I can't recall the author.

I did grow up on the original Nancy Drew stories; despite their being terribly formulaic and generic in their approach, I still enjoy reading them out of nostalgia, if nothing else. But my taste in literature tends more toward romance and sci-fi/fantasy than it does mysteries.
 
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