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Sunday, April 20, 2008

The Times's "50 Greatest Crime Writers"

I prefer this list to the one in The Telegraph a while back. Links on the author's name take you to the Times's page about the author (which gives a suggestion as to which book to try); bibliographies are linked to their Euro Crime page:

1. Patricia Highsmith

2. Georges Simenon - Bibliography

3. Agatha Christie - Bibliography

4. Raymond Chandler

5. Elmore Leonard

6. Arthur Conan Doyle - Bibliography

7. Ed McBain

8. James M. Cain

9. Ian Rankin - Bibliography

10. James Lee Burke

11. Dennis Lehane

12. P.D. James - Bibliography

13. Dashiell Hammett

14. Jim Thompson

15. Sjowall and Wahloo - Bibliography

16. John Dickson Carr

17. Cornell Woolrich

18. Ruth Rendell - Bibliography

19. Ross Macdonald

20. James Ellroy

21. Charles Willeford

22. Dorothy Sayers - Bibliography

23. John Harvey - Bibliography

24. Wilkie Collins

25. Francis Iles

26. Manuel Vasquez Montalban - Bibliography

27. Karin Fossum - Bibliography

28. Val McDermid - Bibliography

29. Edgar Allan Poe

30. Derek Raymond

31. George Pelecanos

32. Margery Allingham - Bibliography

33. Minette Walters - Bibliography

34. Carl Hiaasen

35. Walter Mosley

36. Reginald Hill - Bibliography

37. Michael Dibdin - Bibliography

38. Patricia Cornwell

39. Scott Turow

40. Dick Francis - Bibliography

41. Edmund Crispin

42. Alexander McCall Smith - Bibliography

43. Andrea Camilleri - Bibliography

44. Harlan Coben

45. Donna Leon

46. Josephine Tey - Bibliography

47. Colin Dexter - Bibliography

48. Nicholas Blake

49. Henning Mankell - Bibliography

50. Sara Paretsky


Check out a few responses to the Times article on Crime Scraps, Petrona and Mysteries in Paradise.

I've only sampled a measly 21 of these authors (and 20 off The Telegraph selection). I'm very surprised double Dagger winner Vargas isn't on the list.

1 comment:

  1. Some good people were behind this list, which makes its relegation of Dashiell Hammett to 13th place, four places behind Ian Rankin, all the more inexplicable.

    Ian Rankin the ninth best crime writer of all time, and Hammett 13th? That's a bizarre joke.
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