Before attempting to judge crime novels, I’ll confess that I now read very few, although I remember the ones that whammed me when I was younger. Lots of writers didn’t make it onto my list of favourites: certainly the blood-lovers didn’t; neither did the ones with gimmicks (the detective is a chef, tailor, gardener, jockey, forest ranger) or the ones written in short, declarative sentences. They grow boring. They are sloppy. I don’t read them.
Am I allowed to mention the crime stories I still cherish, many of which I’ve reread a number of times? Some aren’t novels, but they sure know about crime.
Black Money by Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald’s protagonist, Lew Archer, gave readers a new vision of masculinity. Archer’s understanding of the broad expanse of human behaviour animates the terrible compassion and pity he has for the victims he sees all around him. It sometimes also forces him to feel the same emotions for the people who turn out to be the villains. I find him the most interesting, and certainly the most sympathetic, of the many heroes of crime fiction.
Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex) by Sophocles
Yeah, yeah, I know – it’s a play and it’s 2,500 years old, but just think of the crime books you’ve read in which a parent is killed, where men are forced to realize their faults: arrogance, impatience, cowardice in the face of truth. Just imagine you’re reading this story for the first time and tell me the revelation wouldn’t shove you into the wall.
