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Books to Die For

This hefty volume (more than 500 pages) contains one brief essay each by 119 mystery writers from 20 different countries, each of whom writes about a favorite book. Their choices favor noir and bleak crime novels rather than cozies and puzzles, and include more than a few mainstream literary novels with crimes in them, books that many of us wouldn't call mysteries, but any lover of the genre should find at least a couple dozen essays here to interest him. Many—like me—will find considerably more.The contents vary in quality, from excellent, like Tana French's persuasive piece on the importance of Donna Tartt's The Secret History as the first book to use friendship circles as a subject for crime and Dennis Lehane's succinct summation of the virtues of Crumley's The Last Good Kiss, to embarrassing, like David Peace's mannered tough guy prose (passing way beyond the land of Hemingway into the suburbs of Gertrude Stein parody) in his essay on Hammet's The Glass Key, and Elmer Mendoza's bizarre, self-absorbed riff on Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.There are many different sorts of pleasure to be found here. Writers comment on the virtues of classic novels (Sara Paretsky on Bleak House, Minette Walters on Rebecca, John Connolly on The Chill), introduce us to novels unfairly neglected (Bill Pronzini on Elliot Chaze's Black Wings Has My Angel, George Pelecanos on Newton Thornburg's Cutter and Bone) or call our attention to novels of the masters that are often overlooked (Laura Lippman on Jame's M. Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit, Michael Connelly on Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister). They can also perform the valuable service of Introducing us to writers of whom English language readers may be unaware, such as Leo Malet and Jean-Patrick Manchette (France), Manuel Vasquez Montalban and Andrue Martin (Spain), and Natsuo Karino (Japan). But perhaps my favorite essays are by writers who reminisce about authors whom they have met and with whom they have a special connection: Joseph Wambaugh on his fellow true-crime novelist Truman Capote, and Linwood Barclay on his fellow Canadian detective novelist Kenneth Millar (also known as Ross Macdonald).There. I've suggested about a dozen and a half essays you may want to look at, and I'm sure you will find many more, some perhaps about your own favorite mysteries. In the course of reading—or even browsing through—this book, I believe you'll be informed, occasionally enlightened, and—above all—come away with the conviction that the the field of the mystery novel is richer and more various than you had believed it to be.
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