ITT: Hard Case Crime Novels

>>9680682
they range from mediocre to decent. A lot of interesting early career stuff from some big name authors.
but, If you're looking for the real good shit, read some David Goodis.

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>>9682233
almost forgot. check out Whit Masterson, specifically Kitten With a Whip. Also pic related is a great collection I would recommend.

>>9682233
Yeah, the Hard Case books are a real mix. I've found that in general the older ones (1940s/50s/60s) are better and the newer stuff is more imitative and forgettable (with a few exceptions). Some of the ones I've liked the most were:
>Wade Miller - Branded Woman (two co-writers - the same guys also used the pseudonym Whit Masterson, mentioned here >>9682245 )
>David Dodge - Plunder of the Sun
>Donald Westlake - 361
>Richard Stark (pseudonym of Donald Westlake) - Lemons Never Lie
>Lawrence Block - Grifter's Game
>Max Philips - Fade to Blonde (this one's a newer book)

If you want some better-quality crime fiction, try Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Crumley (earlier stuff is better), Charles Willeford, and the early novels of James M. Cain.

Don't read The Colorado Kid it's shite.

>>9682552
What about Joyland?

I figure this is the right thread for this question: Can you guys recommend me some detective fiction?

I'm a complete novice, honestly. To start with I've read (as far as I know) the entire Holmes canon. I got through most of Poirot but then I realized how repetitive most of Christie's shit was and the nursery rhymes started annoying me. Which series should I read next?

>>9684010
Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are probably the best place to start. Be sure to read Chandler's short stories, some of them are as good if not better than his novels.

>>9684177
I'd add Ross MacDonald too, at least the early ones.

>>9684010
Speaking of Holmes, anybody read Solar Pons?

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>>9680682
The Shell Scott series is pulpy fun. More of a swinging detective than a brooding one.

I always want to like these books going in but they always disappoint. I just can't ever find the protagonists "cool."

Are there any of these books that are written entirely as satire or as subversive?

>>9684415
go read Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen if you want cool and winking at you.

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>>9680682

John D. Macdonald is your answer.

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>>9682245
This is good as well.

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Needs more womemes

>>9684383
that cover art makes me want to read it for some reason even tho i have no idea wtf it is

>>9685554
You can't solve mysteries with a vagina

>>9687108
Most mysteries are, in fact, about a vagina, in the end.

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>>9684010
George Pelecanos is usually good, sometimes very good.

I think maybe his best is a trilogy of books featuring PI Derek Strange and his associate/mentee Terry Quinn:

Right as Rain
Hell to Pay
Soul Circus

I like Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch books a lot. You could try reading them in order (The Black Echo is the first) or jump into a good one like Trunk Music or Echo Park. After the first three or so books, Connelly's style became leaner. I think what makes Connelly's stuff so good is the 10 years he spent as a reporter at the LA Times working the crime beat. He understands the procedural stuff really well, from a technical side, but also - being an excellent journalist - how to write it up so it tells a good story, with characters and conflict, and choice, vivid detail. The crime investigation that opens The Black Echo (after a couple of set-up chapters) is a tour de force -- the best 50 pages of police procedural I've ever read. Harry has to investigate a dead junkie found in a concrete tube near a construction project in the Hollywood hills. It's a sweltering Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles. Nobody gives a shit; it's obviously not a homicide; they just want to cut out of work early. Except Harry, who is both a consummate professional and a driven man with a code: Everybody counts or nobody counts. A beautiful, rich scene unfolds, with fantastic procedural detail, a panoply of interesting characters, a few moments of laugh out loud comedy, and great drama that is all the more affecting for the restraint with which Connelly handles it, and seeing it through the filter of Bosch's wounded sensibility. (From what I've seen of the Bosch TV series, it does not come within a country mile of capturing the excellence that is found in the books.)

The Maltese Falcon is an excellent book, a really good read. One of the few cases where a first-rate book was made into a first-rate movie. WR Burnett's The Asphalt Jungle is another such case & a good read.

All of this stuff is very far removed from Christie, who was very good at what she did. (I think of the delightful Tommy and Tuppence; ah, if only I'd found someone to play Tuppence to my Tommy, what a life that might have been. Instead I'm like a secondary character in an early John D. MacDonald - Dil Parks in April Evil, perhaps: "somehow things had not worked out. Too many years had gone by... He was heavy, and his head ached, and his heart pounded, and the lunch eaten hours before was an indigestible heaviness in his stomach. For the first time in his life he wondered what it would be like to die by your own hand.")