Best authors of detective fiction?

[wordeater]

Who are your favorite authors of detective fiction? I'll give my personal top 15.

1 Agatha Christie: best novels
2 Arthur Conan Doyle: best short stories
3 Dorothy Sayers: best of the rest
4 Ngaio Marsh
5 George Simenon
6 Sue Grafton
7 Dashiel Hammett
8 Edgar Alan Poe
9 Wilkie Collins
10 Raymond Chandler
11 Elizabeth George
12 G. K. Chesterton
13 Caroline Graham
14 Nikki French
15 P. D. James

[PeterL]

Favorite authors in that sub-genre depend on which sub-types of detective fiction one prefers.

[dfloyd]

You can't compare Raymond Chandler with Agatha Christie. Philip Marlowe and Hercule Poirot are incomparable, as are others on your list.

[JCamilo]

Actually, Chandler himself compared himself to them.

[dfloyd]

'He took murder out of the English drawing room and put it back into the back streets of L. A. where it belongs.' So he came out favorably in this sense. This is not the exact quote, but probably good enough. Still, I don't think they are equable or can be compared. It is a personal preference. Although I have read much of Christie and Sayers, I would rather have read The Big Sleep, than the collected works of Christie and Sayers. Throw in The Maltese Falcon, and you can forget the rest on the poster's list.
And the third best detective , in my opinion, is not even on the list: Rex Stout's overly abundant detective who wore yellow-silk pyjamas: Nero Wolfe.

There is also one who deserves to be last, or better left off: Sue Grafton. She is almost out of alphabet characters so I hope she soon disappears from all book shelves. To show I'm not prejudiced against women detective story writer, I do like P. D. James. Another woman writer who should be on the list, I don't see how she can be left out, is Patricia Cornwell; her character of Kay Scarpetta is cleverly delineated and Cornwell's morgue experience gives her novels just the right amount of the macabre. She is a
20th century Edgar Allen Poe.

But back to men left out: ex police reporter, Michael Connelly, has certainly earned his due. His character, Harry Bosch, is a bright spot against the dullness of many detective writers of today. And no mention of Mickey Spillane, who I believe passed away this year? His early Mike Hammer books such as I, the Jury and Vengeance Is Mine carved a new epoch in the tough detective.

[JCamilo]

Well, why you will throw? Because you compared. Frankly, I think they are too close, much less than Chandler think. Yes, he is great, some of the best dialogues ever. But he does a mistake to believe his Marlowe was more realistic than Sayers, Christie or Doyle detectives. He indeed is bridge that ended with the detective stories, americans need justice, british need the mistery. Solution was much the key of american stories, the improbability the key of english stories.
But Marlowe is absurd and the circustances are always the same impossible chance of english stories. Even because this is the Poe story. The intelectual game created and that much pleased Borges author of good (or great, Death and Compass) detective stories. I do not dismiss Christie, but the best in the list are Poe and Chesterton, easily.

[Big Dante]

I'm reading Doyle at the moment and his short stories are brilliant. I wouldn't say his novels are bad, far from it actually but he is more suited to short stories because he mildly pads in his novels. I bought a Christie novel the other day and I plan to read it soon, haven't read anything of hers yet.

[kasie]

Do try Henning Mankell - his Inspector Wallander is world weary but sees crime as a reflection of the disintegration of modern society and is as saddened by this reflection as he is angered by it. The books can be read in any order but there is an underlying subplot of Wallander's personal life which is as intriguing as the main plots themselves. Try the third in the series, The White Lioness, as a taster: the plot has dated a little but the story holds up well.

Mankell said he was influenced by two earlier Swedish writers, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (sorry, I can't do the umlauts over the 'o's) - they worked together on a series of books featuring a detective called Martin Beck. I have read only the first in the series, Roseanna, but am looking foreard to reading more.

I have also enjoyed Ian Rankin's Rebus stories, another writer who looks below the apparent respectability of a modern city (Edinburgh) and sees a disintergrating society. I have not yet read any of the book he has written since he 'retired' Rebus.

Ruth Rendell, who also writes as Barbara Vine, has written some gripping stories.

Susan Hill's Inspector Serrailler books are good reads as well, as are Andrew Taylor's books set in 1950s Gloucestershire.

Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse stories make you nervous about visiting Oxford, vying as it does for the title of Murder Capital of England with the Yorkshire of Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill.

I think however that my all time favourite detective has to be Lindsey Davies' Marcus Didius Falco of Vespasian's 'mean streets' of Rome. The laconic detective started out as a pastiche of the hard-boiled American detective but his underlying good nature took over quite early in the first book and somehow is never quite quenched by the continual evidence of humanity's darker side in the close confines of a big city.

[Gregory Samsa]

Do try Henning Mankell - his Inspector Wallander is world weary but sees crime as a reflection of the disintegration of modern society and is as saddened by this reflection as he is angered by it. The books can be read in any order but there is an underlying subplot of Wallander's personal life which is as intriguing as the main plots themselves. Try the third in the series, The White Lioness, as a taster: the plot has dated a little but the story holds up well.

Mankell said he was influenced by two earlier Swedish writers, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (sorry, I can't do the umlauts over the 'o's) - they worked together on a series of books featuring a detective called Martin Beck. I have read only the first in the series, Roseanna, but am looking foreard to reading more.


I don't like Mankell specially much, but Sjöwall/Wahlöö it's absolutely fantastic. I recommend the "The Laughing Policeman" who won Edgar Award for Best Novel 1971.

I also like Paul Austers The New York Trilogy. He presented a stories which deal with the disintegration of people in urban space, yet he used a detective story as the framework, background and essence of the story.

[PeterL]

'He took murder out of the English drawing room and put it back into the back streets of L. A. where it belongs.' So he came out favorably in this sense. This is not the exact quote, but probably good enough. Still, I don't think they are equable or can be compared. It is a personal preference. Although I have read much of Christie and Sayers, I would rather have read The Big Sleep, than the collected works of Christie and Sayers. Throw in The Maltese Falcon, and you can forget the rest on the poster's list.


I believe that Chandler wrote something along those lines in The Gentle Art of Murder. He was specifically referringto Hammett, who was the one who did turn murder back into the crime that it was.

[JCamilo]

Isnt this line you people actually mean?

"Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley; it doesn’t have to stay there forever, but it was a good idea to begin by getting as far as possible from Emily Post’s idea of how a well-bred debutante gnaws a chicken wing." , by Chandler (The Simple Art of Murder)

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

You can't compare Raymond Chandler with Agatha Christie. Philip Marlowe and Hercule Poirot are incomparable, as are others on your list.

I don't think the OP was comparing, just listing his favorites....

[weltanschauung]

http://www.underlandpress.com/uploads/web%20excerpt%20finch.pdf

[Emil Miller]

Yesterday, a young girl of 12 years-of-age asked me if I had read Agatha Christie and I told her that I had but not in English. She then asked if Agatha Christie was worth reading and I said that she was alright but too contrived to be remotely believable. When she asked who she should read instead, I said Conan Doyle who is the best writer of detective fiction I have read although it is not a genre I have particularly bothered with.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

She then asked if Agatha Christie was worth reading and I said that she was alright but too contrived to be remotely believable.

And she understood what that meant? Pretty smart girl.

[Emil Miller]

And she understood what that meant? Pretty smart girl.

She is a very smart girl who attends one of the best girl's schools in London.