What are some good crime/noir books?

[Predator]

I've been meaning to read a few this summer, can anybody give me some suggestions? I was thinking of something by Raymond Chandler or Greg Rucka, but I'll take any suggestions.

[Rabid Trekkie]

Only recently got my introduction to noir books, Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op which is a great collection of short stories. It took a while for me to get comfortable with the style it is written in, but by the third story I didn't want to put the thing down.

[Shem the Penman]

Chandler's always good. If you've got the time, check out James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet -- The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz.

You might also want to try Jim Thompson, whose specialty was very dark noir.

[sheets]

I've been meaning to read a few this summer, can anybody give me some suggestions? I was thinking of something by Raymond Chandler or Greg Rucka, but I'll take any suggestions.

If you're trying to get into reading hard-boiled crime fiction, the "Big 3" authors to start with are Chandler, Hammett, and James Cain. These guys are to crime fiction what Tolkien and Robert E. Howard are to fantasy and Asimov and Heinlein are to sci-fi. For Chandler, I would recommend starting with The Big Sleep; for Hammett, either The Maltese Falcon or Red Harvest; and for Cain, read either The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity.

For more modern authors, Elmore Leonard is very good, especially his older, Detroit period writing, like City Primeval. James Ellroy is another major writer...The Black Dahlia is a good starting point for him.

Other major authors: Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters), Chester Himes (Cotton Comes to Harlem), Richard Stark (The Hunter/Payback), John D. MacDonald (Travis McGee series, Cape Fear), David Goodis (Nightfall, Down There), Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Cornell Woolrich (Phantom Lady, I Married a Dead Man). If you want something a little more over the top, try Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury (first Mike Hammer book).

Otherwise, pick up *anything* from the Hard Case Crime imprint. They've got a great mix of new and old stuff.

[Matt Linton]

Chandler is amazing. Rucka's great. I'll throw in the Matthew Scudder novels by Lawerence Block, Caught Stealing and Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston, and the Elvis Cole novels by Robert Crais. They start out kind of light, but they're addictive, and each novel takes some really dark turns. The first novel is The Monkey's Raincoat, but on his website Crais says he usually recommends new readers start with LA Requiem or The Last Detective (I'd say in that order).

[FroggieBKT]

I'll ditto a lot of what people have already suggested. Chandler and Hammett are really sort of givens. They both sort of set the standard. John D. MacDonald is my personal favorite. Robert Crais is good. Lawrence Block's Scudder books are fantastic. Dennis Lehane is top notch too.

[Subotai]

I'd start with Lawrence Block's early Matt Scudder novels: The Sins of the Fathers, A Time to Murder and Create, In the Midst of Death, A Stab in the Dark, Eight Million Ways to Die. Really some of the best in modern hard-core detective fiction.

A brother in spirit to Matt Scudder is Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor: the Guards, The Killing of the Tinkers, The Magdalen Martyrs, The Dramatist and Priest .

Block and Taylor are two guys who have experienced life from the dirt up. Not guys who hung out at an AA meeting to get the alcoholic miasma. And not for the faint of heart.

Another fella who is still going strong is James Crumley, who wrote the classic The Last Good Kiss thirty years ago and which is a good place to start. James Lee Burke is another member of the Old Guard; his Dave Robicheaux series is heartbreaking, and the most recent, Pegasus Descending, is just out in trade paperback.

Charles Willeford's wonderful creation, a worn-down Miami detective named Hoke Moseley, stars in what may be the finest police series ever. The first novel in the series, Miami Blues, was filmed with Fred Ward and Alec Baldwin.

I'd just like to finish by strongly recommending a couple of fellas: First, Kent Anderson, who is in the middle of a series starting his magnificent character, Hanson, Vietnam-vet turned cop. His Night Dogs is probably the best crime novel I've ever read. Sympathy for the Devil is about Hanson's experiences in Vietnam and is also top-shelf.

As well, Adrian McKinty, whose Dead I Well May Be is a drop-dead fierce novel about an Irish expatriate set up in a drug deal who ends up in a Mexican prison. The guy can just plain write.

Eh, one more: Anyone who has the first Preacher trade has read the intro from Joe Lansdale. Lansdale (Who also wrote Bubba Ho-Tep) has a series starring two mis-matched friends, Hap and Leonard, starting with Savage Season and the most recent entry, Captains Outrageous. Truly violent and funny.

Whew! I'll shut up now.

[Dustin]

Any book by Harlan Coben is an incredible type of crime book. Trust me. The best one by him -in my opinion- is called, No Second Chance

[Shellhead]

Eh, one more: Anyone who has the first Preacher trade has read the intro from Joe Lansdale. Lansdale (Who also wrote Bubba Ho-Tep) has a series starring two mis-matched friends, Hap and Leonard, starting with Savage Season and the most recent entry, Captains Outrageous. Truly violent and funny.

The adventures of Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are awesome, but I'm not sure if they are noir... I suppose they are if the subgenre is portable enough to move from gritty urban streets to small redneck towns and trailer parks. Lansdale's East Texas is definitely a rough and tough place, and the real work East Texas looks pretty grim from the highway. And at one point in Rumble Tumble, there is a paragraph that nicely summarizes H.P. Lovecraft's bleak view of reality without even naming him. At any rate, I highly recommend these books, noir or not. Start with Savage Season and go from there.

[sheets]

The adventures of Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are awesome, but I'm not sure if they are noir... I suppose they are if the subgenre is portable enough to move from gritty urban streets to small redneck towns and trailer parks.

I think they count. They're funny books but the humor is used as a cover for some really nasty settings and characters.

To be honest, I've kind of grown to hate the term "noir". It only really works as an extremely vague catch-all term and it breaks down very quickly if you try to get even slightly specific. I can't count the number of discussions I've seen online of people who start talking "noir" only for the thread to turn into a very long, repetitive argument over just what hell noir is, while the actual books and movies get left behind :)

[Shellhead]

I'm currently reading "Noir" by K.W. Jeter. It falls far short of his excellent "Infernal Devices", but then that can be said about most Jeter books. This is a bleak cyberpunk dystopia, with savage social criticism of corporate America. It has some interesting ideas and an unusually small cast of characters for such a long book. I'm not sure if I actually enjoy it, but I'm still reading, so it definitely doesn't suck.

[Slam_Bradley]

Good coverage here, fellers. The only major omission that I noticed was Graham Greene.

[Subotai]

To be honest, I've kind of grown to hate the term "noir". It only really works as an extremely vague catch-all term and it breaks down very quickly if you try to get even slightly specific. I can't count the number of discussions I've seen online of people who start talking "noir" only for the thread to turn into a very long, repetitive argument over just what hell noir is, while the actual books and movies get left behind :)

I hear what you're saying. Generally - present company excluded, of course (;) ) - whenever I take part in a discussion of 'noir' things have a tendency to become a little pretentious; I know guys like Cain, Woolrich, Thompson, etc. have the patent on darker stories with the non-traditional protagonist; but I think that sort of limits our discussion. 'Hard-boiled' probably suits our purposes better. I've read some great discussions and suggestions here.

[Magneto_X]

The series of books by Larry Millett about Sherlock Holmes are excellent. There's about five or six of them. Not sure if they are still continuing, though.

[Web of Fear]

I'd recommend the Malcolm Pryce "Aberystwyth" series of books. Hard boiled noir, set against the 24 hour whelk bars and the rock factories that belch pink smoke into the sky