Product Description

The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction takes the reader on a guided tour of the mean streets and blind corners that make up the world’s most popular literary genre. The insider’s book recommends over 200 classic crime novels from masterminds Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith to modern hotshots James Elroy and Patricia Cornwall. You’ll investigate gumshoes, spies, spooks, serial killers, forensic females, prying priests and patsies from the past, present, and future. Complete with extra information on what to read next, all movie adaptions, and illustrated throughout with photos and diagrams …all the evidence that counts

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36323 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Barry Forshaw reviews crime fiction for The Independent and The Express, and edits Crime Time magazine

Customer Reviews

A good guide but some flaws in the coverage
This is a useful book for both crime afficionados wanting tips on some more obscure new directions and for newcomers who just want to know where to start.

Each chapter recommends and reviews a selection of crime novels (over 200 in total) and there are the usual Rough Guide boxes and sidebars on related areas such as films, author profiles and crime genres. The chapters are organised thematically and range from the origins of crime fiction (Edgar Allan Poe, Conan Doyle) and the 'golden age' (Christie, Allingham, Sayers) through hard-boiled (Chandler, Hammett, Thompson) to more contemporary genres such as police procedural, espionage, serial killers, organized crime etc. The reviews maintain a fine balance between criticism and enthusiasm and cleverly avoid the 'spoiler' pitfalls of revealing too much plot.

The book is much stronger on contemporary writers and most of the selections are books published in the last 30 years so if you want lots of recommendations for 'classic' golden age novels then you would be better served looking elsewhere. Despite the focus on the contemporary, the book has several flaws - it is fairly weak on foreign fiction despite there being one chapter devoted to this and contains nothing on important writers such as Jean-Patrick Manchette, Peter Hoeg, Jo Nesbo, Ake Edwardson, Janwillem van de Wetering, Manuel Vazquez Montalban, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, Massimo Carlotto, Jose Carlos Somoza etc. There are also a number of important contemporary writers who are also absent (the outstanding John Franklin Bardin, Don Winslow, Jonathan Lethem, Christopher Fowler, Andrew Vachss, Jeff Lindsay, Reginald Hill, Ken Bruen, Shane Stevens etc). While there will always be constraints on who to include because of space considerations, I find it strange that writers of this calibre were omitted and yet space was found for hacks such as Andy McNab, Chris Ryan and Michael Crichton. There are also a number of errors (The Godfather was published in 1969 not 1978, it's Iain not Ian Sinclair, Rankin's 2006 book was The Naming of the Dead etc.) but these are minor quibbles.

In summary a good first attempt and I hope that it is successful enough for a 2nd edition to include some of the great writers above. Oh, and where is Face on the Cutting Room Floor...?

A good start but with strange omissions
Any heavy reader enjoys finding a new source for authors and titles. There are the usual literary and professional library serials, but for targeted recommendations you really need a book, and I'm always on the look-out for new ones. This small volume is recent enough to include newer authors, which is always useful. Its nearly 300 pages are divided thematically, so selected titles by a given author may appear scattered throughout the book. Forshaw, who edits Crime Time magazine, is first and foremost a fan himself, and he seems to know his field. His descriptions (judging by his treatment of the books I'm already familiar with) are generally accurate, including his comments on public reception of them, and he notes also the films (good and bad) that often have resulted. By the time I finished the volume, I had a "to read" list of nearly two dozen authors and works, which is exactly why I picked it up. There are some problems, though. First, the editors (I assume he had an editor) have allowed Forshaw to retain rather too much excessively Brit slang -- "taking gardening leave," information being "freighted in," etc. A semi-reference book like this should convey what it wants to say without causing the reader to pause and think about what's meant. More puzzling, though, the author includes any number of quite minor writers (especially British ones) with only one or two books under their belts. But where is Jacqueline Winspear's popular and ever-lengthening historical series featuring psychological detective Maisie Dobbs ? Or Jeff Lindsay's novels about Florida serial killer Dexter Morgan, which have spun off a television series? Or Robert Eversz's noirish stories about the dangerously attractive Nina Zero? Or Susanna Gregory's popular medieval mysteries? Finally, and most egregiously, why does he omit Martha Grimes's long-running, bestselling Superintendent Richard Jury novels? And yet he includes Robin Cook's medical thrillers (when he's not being Derek Raymond), which are in no way crime novels. They're not even spy stories. The same is true of Frederick Forsyth's Avenger -- a pretty good book but still a pure military/political thriller. Still, there are enough authors discussed here that any dedicated reader of mysteries is sure to find some new ones.