Favorite Mystery Writer

[pippin]

Duers, who are your favorite mystery writers, and which of their books do you think are best?

I like Elizabeth George although I don't think her most recent book
A Place of Hiding is her best.

[Maru]

1. I'm a big fan of British mysteries

I like Elizabeth George, also Peter Robinson, Ruth Rendell, and Reginald Hill.

Phil Rickman is my favorite - he blends murder with the supernatural.

[FauxNewsBlues]

2. Dennis Lehane

It made me very happy when he organized the group of writers to take out an ad denouncing the war in Iraq.

I will have to kick his ass though if he doesn't write another Kinsey/Gennaro book soon though.

[Richardo]

17. Lehane rocks - I liked him before I heard about the anti-war ad...

...which was just now.

How do you think the "Mystic River" movie will be? Plus: Eastwood directing. Question marks: casting. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon?

I just did not see the three guys as THESE three guys. And I like Tim Robbins a lot...

[Brucey]

3. I recommend

Tony Hillerman and M.D. Lake

[curse10]

4. Elizabeth George fan here

Haven't read her latest though, I'm through A Traitor to Memory.

[SiobhanClancy]

5. I like the Anne Perry Victorian mysteries..

and I've always wondered if her own murder conviction(as a teenager)gives her a different perspective.

[Catshrink]

6. PD James --

Gave us Inspector Dagleish....

And I admit it, I love Agatha Christie and John LeCarre, too.

[mac56]

12. Second for PD James.

nm

[jumptheshadow]

7. Rex Stout

The Nero Wolf series is entertaining and also is an interesting glimpse into NY in the 40s and 50s.

[bmbmd]

8. I am addicted to Rex Stout's

"Nero Wolfe" novels, and I own them all. I even own the fake Neros by Robert Goldsborough.

The TV show wasn't bad, either.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Although I wish the TV series could have run in the 1970s

when Orson Welles was still alive to play Nero Wolfe and Alan Alda was still young enough to be Archie Goodwin.

[fofer]

9. I have to go with the Brits as well.

P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, and Agatha Christie are my favorites.

[Lisa]

10. Frank McConnell

Sadly, he passed away a couple of years ago. But his widow Celeste showed up at the anti-war protests this spring, and said he would have wanted her to speak out on his behalf.

[Wolfman 11]

11. Graham Greene

"Travels With My Aunt", "The Quiet American", and "The Power and the Glory" speak volumes for themselves. I honestly believe that there are no American writers today who can match Greene in the area of international mystery. He traveled much and had an edge.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. A good author...

and I've read and enjoyed "The Quiet American" and "Power and the Glory"; but mysteries? I've never heard anyone call them that...

[Seneca]

13. Walter Moseley

eom

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Too many to list

There are some writers whose books I always try to buy:

Anne Perry: two series of Victorian mysteries, one taking place in the 1880s and the other in the 1860s.

Tony Hillerman: Murder on the Navaho reservation, written by an Anglo whose books have won him awards from the Navaho Nation.

P.D.James: one of the writers who helped move the British mystery story out of its cutesie Agatha Christie mode. She's eighty or thereabouts now, so I wonder if we'll be getting any more Dalgliesh mysteries.

Ruth Rendell: two series, one being the English village mystery updated, and the other being crime through the eyes of the criminal

J.A. Jance: two series, one about a police detective in Seattle and another about a woman sheriff in Arizona

Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton: both have superficially similar female P.I. characters, although Paretsky's books are more sophisticated
)
Faye Kellerman: Her main character is a police detective who converted to Orthodox Judaism after falling in love with an Orthodox widow.

Barbara Hambly: Her main character is a well-educated free black man in pre-Civil War New Orleans. These books are worth reading simply for their portrayal of the unique ethnic mix (French, Spanish, Anglo, enslaved and free Africans, mixed-race) of the city and how that played out in everyday life.

Simon Brett: His dryly humorous older series, featuring actor Charles Paris, is a must for anyone who has ever been associated with theater or broadcasting. He seems to have shifted gears and started another series, which I don't like as well.

Robert Barnard: As far as I know, he has never written a series. All his mysteries, mostly set in modern England, but also in Norway and Australia, are unique.

Rosemary Auber: Her amateur detective is a former judge who became a street person in Toronto after suffering professional disgrace.

Kate Charles: An American living in England, she writes about a restorer of old churches who keeps running into mysteries connected with the parishes that hire him.

Reginald Hill: Inspector Dalziel is even raunchier and more outrageous in the books than he was on the TV series that ran on A&E a couple of years ago.

Walter Moseley: Life in the African-American community in Los Angeles from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

Actually, I follow the careers of a lot of different authors, so this is just a partial list.

Years ago, someone in the Washington Monthly said that when future sociologists wanted to know about the underside of life in the twentieth century, they would turn not to literary fiction but to mysteries. I agree. The quality of both plot and characterization has improved remarkably over the years.

[zekeson]

16. John Sandford

I like to read Dick Francis for a fast read, I've read most fo the Sue Grafton alphabet series and enjoyed them. I really like a new author named Grant Blackwood, who is more intrigue, spy stype stuff, but certainly mystery mixed in. And, early Elmore Leonard is cool.