Persnickety

First off, I used a word as the title of this post that I don't know, and what's more, that I didn't look up first. It just sounds like the right word and while that's never enough, who knows, I might be lucky. If I end up looking like an ignoramus, well, I haven't looked up that word, either. But enough of reveling in my own laziness.

I was once invited to join a book group by the esteemed author Diane Vogt. We would select crime fiction of some sort and meet regularly to discuss the book. I ended up dropping out after some months because some of the participants didn't leave a comfortable amount of room for dissenting opinion.

Anyway, during this time the notion that I wholeheartedly endorse authors as opposed to titles seemed to crystallize. As I've written about before, there are far too many writers who can write well, or better yet, craft fine books, but for whatever reason don't.

So I can recommend so-and-so's (see, I'm getting away from naming names) first two books, or such-and-such's first three books, but then things seem to start sliding in the wrong direction. Yes, I got grief for this in the book group, but that's been over for years and I really need to let it go.

There are very few authors who've never let me down. Lawrence Block is one, with some books being okay and others wonderful, and some that I like but have to get past that annoying street urchin in the Scudder books. His burglar books have never done it for me, but I don't despise them, either. They're just not to my taste.

Donald Westlake is superb, and his alter-ego, Richard Stark, is sublime. His Parker series is the single best crime fiction series there has ever been. If you don't believe me, pick one up and see if you can put it down whenever you like. They're a crime fiction reader's crack.

James Lee Burke writes such terribly beautiful prose that it's incomprehensible to me when I read that some people think he tends to wax a bit purple. No, he doesn't, but I can see why you say that. Even when he was in that period where he wrote the same book over and over, his work was mesmerizing. And when he was able to get more creative again, there was no happier day on my bookshelves.

Dick Francis maybe had a book or two out of forty that was a bit flat, but only a bit. And even though he wrote about different characters who were really the same character with a different name and job, his books are just so damned pleasurable that it doesn't really matter.

I find Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone series to be highly readable, too. You have to look past the fact that Stone never did a whole lot of actual work, he'd investigate the crime but someone always steps forward and gives him the information he needs to solve it. He's no Sherlock Holmes but the characterization in the books is so strong they're easily addictive.

I like Domenic Stansberry a lot, even though some of his stuff has some fairly obvious contrivances. In Manifesto for the Dead, for instance, the fictionalized Jim Thompson has his plans revealed by his inappropriately loud-mouthed wife in front of the very people conspiring to frame her husband. You can't read it without feeling the clumsiness, but otherwise the book, like all of Stansberry's work, reminds me more of a modern day Hammett than anyone I can think of. And not just because he writes of San Francisco.

There's a fellow named Jack Kelly who reminds me of Stansberry and a bit more of James M. Cain then Hammett whose books used to be difficult to cull because of the broad search results from his not terribly distinctive name. His five books are all excellent and I wish he'd either write more, or make it easier for me to find them if he has.

So there, there are a number of contemporary writers whose work I can recommend, at least in large chunks. If we look at Irish crime fiction, I can give you a bunch more: Adrian McKinty, Declan Hughes, Declan Burke, Ken Bruen, Alan Glynn, Stuart Neville, and more. But that's for another time.