Bookshelf of the Month — December
by Gunnar Staalesen
I have been an avid reader since I was 7 years old. In the early years I read all the classics, like Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, J. F. Cooper, Mark Twain — you name them — as well as more modern children books, The Hardy Boys, Enid Blyton’s books and other like that. I read of course about Tarzan, and I read comics, with Carl Barks as one of the best storytellers of them all. The very first “real crime novel” I read, was The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, and later on I read a lot of crime fiction, just to mention a few: Agatha Christie, Quentin Patrick, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner, Simenon and many other writers. But it was when I read the Swedish writers Sjöwall & Wahlöö and shortly after discovered Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, that I understood how important crime fiction could be — how great fiction is!
I have several bookshelves, but I have chosen the one who gives a picture of some of the most important crime writers in my life. The shelf begins with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but on the very top of the shelf you can find books like the Harry Potter books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Swedish writers like Leif GW Persson and Henning Mankell, Spade & Archer by Joe Gores and several books by a modern favorite of mine, the Scottish writer Ian Rankin, with his marvelous series from Edinburgh, about the police detective Rebus. They are outside the organized books.
When we start on the “official” book shelf, you will find, as already partly mentioned, the holy trinity of American crime fiction, Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald. All three have influenced my own writing immensely. My first crime novel, published in 1975, opened with a Hammett quote: “When murders are committed by mathematics, I said, you can solve them by mathematics. Most of them aren’t and this one wasn’t.” This could be the slogan of all my following crime novels. I read Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald when I started my own crime writing. Chandler was an inspiration for the way I try to write myself, the use of the language, the poetry and the dark humor. I learned a lot of plotting by reading Macdonald, the best plotter of those three masters. I still can re-read them all with the greatest of pleasure.
In the same company you find Margaret Millar, the wife of Ross Macdonald and a first class crime writer herself. When I am asked what is the best crime novel ever written, I always put How Like an Angel by Margaret Millar on the top of the list. What a book, what a plot, what a composition!
Next in line are two Scandinavian favorites, the Swedish writer Ulf Durling and the Danish one, Dan Turell. I am afraid you will not know them in the U.S., but if you ever find a translation of them into English, try them out! Ulf Durling was a master of crime fiction. Turell wrote in a style similar to mine, and inspired by the same masters: Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald.
Further down you find another favorite, the Spanish writer Manuel Vásquez Montalbán, with his fabulous private eye from Barcelona, Pepe Carvalho, here in Norwegian or Danish translations. Then singular books by Ray Bradbury and Lawrence Block before another favorite: James Lee Burke, another pupil of the Chandler school, even if his hero is a police officer. And Burke has his own shelf in modern crime fiction, in my opinion: very personal and with a strong, poetic language. Other American writers follow: Robert Crais, the marvelous James Crumley, and on the bottom shelf a collection of American private eye writers, both classic and modern, all of them part of my collection of that sort of literature, all part of my own “education” as crime fiction writer — and all of them great fun to read!
“Here’s looking at you, kid. Find me another private eye book, please!”
