During the month of September, we’re celebrating classic crime fiction in all its forms and we’ve already published several articles about various books and authors. But we don’t just want to tell you what we think the classics are. We’d love to know what you think too. So we’re welcoming readers of Crime Fiction Lover to nominate their favourite classic crime novels.
It’s easy to take part. All you need to do is choose your classic, and send us an email headed My Crime Classic. State the book’s title and author, along with 100 words on why it’s your favourite piece of classic crime fiction. Then, as Classics in September rolls on, we’ll post as many submissions as we can here on Crime Fiction Lover. Send us a link too, if you have a website or a blog that you want to tell our readers about.
Yesterday, someone asked how we define a classic. Well, we’re not going to put up any restrictions. If you think the book you’ve chosen is a classic, tell us why in your 100 words, and if your justification seems sound we’ll roll with it. This is going to be a fun exercise, not an academic one!
Here’s the email address: info [at] crimefictionlover [dot] com. Just substitute the [at] with @ and the [dot] with a full-stop. We’ve written it this way to cut down on spam.
The Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Harris. This is crime writing at its finest. It combines mythic and fairy tale elements that will make it a timeless classic even when technology moves on to make its contemporary forensics obsolete. The Beauty (Starling) and The Beast (Lecter) meets Ovid`s Metamorphoses [Jame Gumb~ the shape shifter]. Strange but true. US 1st edition of Red Dragon. Lecter is not mentioned in the blurb. Classic.
The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan takes a lot of beating although I’m sure I could name lots more.
I’ve kind of outgrown Agatha Christie which I devoured as a teenager in place of children’s books. But even now I adore the final explanatory scene from Death on the Nile, one of her best books. Because the passengers are a polyglot international group, the grating social peculiarities of the England-based books are largely missing not to mention the solution is vintage Christie.
I just love Raymond Chandler and have done since I was a teenager (and that’s not today or yesterday) so much so that I can’t pick one of his books so submit all of them.
Anything by Patricia Highsmith. Especially the Tom Ripley books. Such a fascinating character.
Hey Chris – thanks for stopping by. In last year’s Classics in September, Eva Dolan wrote a fine piece about Highsmith’s work. You might find it interesting: http://www.crimefictionlover.co.uk/2012/09/cis-revisiting-mr-ripley/