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Crime Series

Started by nedthemumbler, October 10, 2017, 01:52:32 PM

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nedthemumbler

Any fans?  Can be found everywhere, for example a holiday house abroad will include it as one of the only two books not in foreign.  Along with Bryson and Jamie Oliver  the lifeblood of the charity shop.  You already own at least one,  right now.  You never actually bought it, or carried it over your threshold, but there it is. 

You know the drill, its comforting.  The same basic story, given a slightly different polish and twist each time out.  The same main character, mostly an angry and ageing male.

Occasionally different scenery, but often the same streets, city.  The same bloody mayhem behind prim front doors, the grinding misanthropy and desire to hurt carefully racheted up to peak excitement for the reader.

Drip fed at first then funnel then flume.  Then just enough time to reset everything to a base level bleak.  All you have just waded through unlikely to ever be mentioned again.


I have enjoyed Rebus and Rankin, the slightly upmarket hunchback dwarf olden times monk one,  as well as Nesbo.

You can tell when a book is worth a go when you can buy by the crate, alla Nesbo and Rankin there.  As if it was food..

PS I am open to suggestions for a series that is more on the humorous side, not the portentousness. 

Fambo Number Mive

I do love a good crime series. Rankin's Rebus, as you mention, is excellent, well written, easy to picture and often very funny. I used to enjoy the Inspector Morse novels when I was younger and also read the Frost books (though Frost has some really disgusting views about teens and sex, which made me very uncomfortable. Basically he comes across as a nonce.

Michael Connolly's Bosch novels are also a good read. If you're after a quick read Ed McBain's 87th Precint novels are worth looking at, though I prefer his stand alone novels.

BlodwynPig

I got into Mo Hayder after becoming intrigued by the title "Pig Island". It was a great beginning and middle but a poor ending. Her Tokyo is much much better. From her I found Karin Slaughter, who does a good , if somewhat repetitive, cop/killer/doctor book. And Mark Billingham (Thorne, which made the leap to TV), is a decent pulpy read.

Serge

Possibly not a series as such, but there are recurring characters in George Pelecanos' novels, all of which are set in Washington DC. I'm not going to go into it too much here, as I may start a Pelecanos thread at one point, and I definitely have another thread up my sleeve I'm going to start in a bit.

Love Nesbo (there is a thread in Picture Box about him), and I'm glad that they've got someone to carry on with the Millennium series, even if it is glaringly obvious that he's not taking it in the direction that Stieg Larsson would have done.

Although none of these are likely to end up being crate-sized series, there are a handful of novels I've read recently which are the first parts in proposed series - Ray Celestin's 'The Axeman's Jazz' and 'Dead Man's Blues', Thomas Mullen's 'Darktown' and Abir Mukherjee's 'A Rising Man'. I've also been reading Ragnar Jonasson's Dark Iceland books, which have been frustratingly printed out of order in their English translations.

BritishHobo

I'm currently a bit excited by Anthony Horowitz, who's moving in to crime for adults. He's been largely known until recently as a children's writer and TV writer (Foyle's War mainly) but within that, he's shown the ability to branch out across several genres. He wrote the Alex Rider series, which nabbed me as a kid, and which was unashamedly inspired by James Bond, with gadgets, ludicrous villains, absolute daftness. He also wrote a great series called The Diamond Brothers, a really funny take on detective noir fiction - I think it's because of both of these that he ended up writing the official new Sherlock Holmes books for the Doyle estate, and this new Bond one, Trigger Mortis, for the Fleming estate. He also did a fantastic kids-with-powers/apocalypse series that was far better than it had any right to be, starting with a gothic horror, then a whole book set in Peru, then a big political conspiracy set in America, a proper creepy horror set in Japan, and finally a big fucking brick of an apocalyptic finale, all huge and Lovecraftian, a proper world-wide adventure. Best kid's series I've read. I loved him as a nipper.

Anyway, he's recently been attempting to reposition himself a bit by focusing on crime for adults, and his first attempt last year, The Magpie Murders, was great fun. There's been a lot of crime novels recently which concern a book at the centre of a murder (JK Rowling's second Strike novel, this year's The Book of Mirrors), but this is the first one I've read which actually contains the book in question inside itself - and not in drips and drabs, either - The Magpie Murders opens with the murder of a famous crime author, and then goes on to display the entire manuscript of the book, in which his famous Poirot-esque detective solves his last case, having developed a fatal disease, followed by the 'real' investigation to find the author's killer. It's a really fun idea, and he pulls it off.

He's now released the first in a new crime series, which is going to sound a bit wanky, because it follows Anthony Horowitz, children's and TV writer, having just completed House of Silk, his first Sherlock Holmes book,, being asked by a detective to accompany him on a case and write a book about him. Normally this would be an insufferably metatextual experiment, but Horowitz is such a straightforward, readable writer that it's just fun. Nobody takes Anthony Horowitz the character seriously - he's a children's author who never writes anything based in the real world (as he's often reminded throughout), who has an inflated opinion of his own crime knowledge, and who's generally a bit posh and out-of-touch. I've not finished this one yet, but I'm zooming through it and really enjoying it. There seems to have been a big push for it, so hopefully there'll be more.

the ouch cube

Joe R Lansdale's Hap and Leonard series (recently adapted for TV, it wasn't very good)

A white, ex-draft dodger, ex-'60s radical/ageing hippy and his Vietnam veteran, violent-tempered, black, gay, Republican pal operate as a sort of unofficial private detective agency-cum-real-life-A Team, solving crimes and kicking ass.

Lansdale's prose tends to shift from gleefully vulgar humour (he is great on capturing the way men try to one-up each other in terms of offensive jokes, and the general insult-swapping that underlies male friendship) to truly wince-worthy violence, sometimes within the space of a page.

jobotic

Ross McDonald's Lew Archer novels.

I will expand later, as it were, just wanted to show off my credentials.

studpuppet

If you like a finite series that has a complete arc and good stories, try the Martin Beck series by Sjöwell and Wahlöö. they were written in between the mid-sixties and mid-seventies and deal with Sweden's social issues of the time as well as being ace police procedurals.

The writers were a husband and wife who planned ten books, each book with thirty chapters and they wrote alternate chapters in a kind of tag team scenario. You might think that would stifle their creativity but the first book is set over a period of months while other stories can be set over a twenty four hour period. They are realistic crimes and the portrayal of society in general is fascinating (if there's a continuing theme it's the friction between the older generation and the younger, more permissive society that was emerging and then turning sour as the seventies began).

Anyway, they're credited with spawning the Wallander books and Scandinavian Noir in general, and are great police procedurals if nothing else - I like them because Beck isn't a superhero cop who always solves the crime; sometimes he gets a bit of luck or a colleague makes the connections. Give them a go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Beck

jobotic


Phil Colons

Fancy something that's far less series than the above ?, I'd recommend Malcolm Pryces Aberystwyth novels featuring Louie Knight and Kinky Freidmans crime novels.

Serge

Oh yes, how could I forget both of them? I did once ask Cerys if the Pryce novels were a true depiction of Aberystwyth, and she confirmed that they were. The Kinkster is amazing, though my favourite character in the books is Ratso, who I think wasn't keen on his portrayal in them.

nedthemumbler

Going to definitely try the Aberystwyth ones, thanks.  The Swedish series looks great too, just my thing.  Knew it was worth asking.

Keebleman

Best crime novel I have ever read is PD James' The Skull Beneath the Skin.  A great mystery with a very satisfying and unusual conclusion, and Cordelia Gray was a character I truly loved - she reminded me of an unrequited crush I'd had in the sixth form (I was 19 when I read the book) - and I was annoyed that James never featured her again.

But as with her main character Adam Dalgliesh, James was always careful never to put Cordelia in a situation where a sense of humour might come in handy, and this arid archness, which infects nearly all her characters, together with declining powers as she aged, put me off her books.

Although I have just read Death of an Expert Witness after picking it up from a charity shop and I did enjoy it despite a rather muddled solution to the crime.

nedthemumbler

I believe PD James wrote Children of Men as well.

Fonz

Quote from: studpuppet on October 12, 2017, 08:12:48 AM
If you like a finite series that has a complete arc and good stories, try the Martin Beck series by Sjöwell and Wahlöö. they were written in between the mid-sixties and mid-seventies and deal with Sweden's social issues of the time as well as being ace police procedurals.

The writers were a husband and wife who planned ten books, each book with thirty chapters and they wrote alternate chapters in a kind of tag team scenario. You might think that would stifle their creativity but the first book is set over a period of months while other stories can be set over a twenty four hour period. They are realistic crimes and the portrayal of society in general is fascinating (if there's a continuing theme it's the friction between the older generation and the younger, more permissive society that was emerging and then turning sour as the seventies began).

Anyway, they're credited with spawning the Wallander books and Scandinavian Noir in general, and are great police procedurals if nothing else - I like them because Beck isn't a superhero cop who always solves the crime; sometimes he gets a bit of luck or a colleague makes the connections. Give them a go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Beck

Another vote for the Beck series.

An interesting series is the Brandstetter run by Joseph Hansen. The protagonist is a homosexual in California, largely during the seventies and eighties. Well written. The romance doesn't intrude on the storyline for the most part.

Also, the Travis McGee books by John Macdonald. Floridian high jinx.