So, if you were able to ask British novelist P.D. James (The Lighthouse) to select the five crime novels she’s found to be the most riveting, which books do you think would be on her list? As it happens, The Wall Street Journal addressed that very query to the 85-year-old Baroness of Holland Park. Her picks:
● Tragedy at Law, by Cyril Hare (1943)
● The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey (1949)
● The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin (1946)
● Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933)
● Dissolution, by C.J. Sansom (2003)
The surprise here isn’t simply that Lady James has chosen only one book published since 1950 (and none by American authors), but that it’s Dissolution, the debut novel by Sansom. A British historian and onetime solicitor, Sansom picked up the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award not for Dissolution, but for Dark Fire (2004), his second book featuring mid-16th-century hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake, who works on assignment for Lord Thomas Cromwell, King Henry VIII’s vicar-general.
Anybody else have their own suggestions for the most riveting read?
Sunday, June 04, 2006
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2 comments:
1. The Chill. R. MacDonald
2. Place of Execution V. McDermid
3. Dance at the Slaughterhouse. L. Block
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley. P. Highsmith
5. Devil in a Blue Dress
W. Mosley
DOWN BY THE RIVER WHERE THE DEAD ME GO, by George Pelecanos. After I bought it, my wife and I went to a boutique next to the bookstore and I read about half of it while she shopped.
The unfortunate result was that whenever she asked, "Can I get this?" I just mumbled, "Yeah, whatever."
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