Once More, With Feeling

Far be it from us to take credit for this idea (even though The Rap Sheet did produce a major compilation this last summer of the crime novels writers and critics think have been “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years”). We’ll simply note that Britain’s Observer newspaper over the weekend published a nice long collection of tributes from 50 notable writers to “brilliant but underrated novels that deserve a second chance to shine.”

There are, unfortunately, few crime titles in the mix, though Scottish writer Val McDermid did manage to get in George V. Higgins’ 1972 debut novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (applauding its “torrents of pin-sharp dialogue, elliptical story-telling” and the author’s ability to speak “directly into the ear of his reader about the lives of lawyers and crooks, cops and casualties”). And Ian Rankin tossed in what was, to me anyway, a thoroughly obscure, 1824 work called The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg, which he describes as “[b]army and scary and predating Jekyll and Hyde. And written by a shepherd who barely read any books. A Scottish classic, a world classic, yet hardly anyone, writers excepted, has actually read it.”

But while mysteries were missing from this list, several other contributors to the genre were at least asked for their book nominations. John Mortimer chose Midnight (1936), by Julien Green; Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) suggested The Long Ships (1941-45), by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson; David Peace put his two cents in on Eden Eden Eden (1970), by Pierre Guyotat (“this book is the bravest and most harrowing account of the acts of war and sex you will ever read”); John Banville (aka Benjamin Black, Christine Falls) went with Langrishe, Go Down (1966), by Aidan Higgins; and William Boyd (Restless) defended the brilliance of Craig Nova’s 1979 novel, Incandescence (“it haunts and disturbs, resonating eerily in your mind, at once bleakly realistic and full of strange sardonic philosophical riffs. There has been nothing quite like it in contemporary American fiction.”).

The Observer’s full rundown of nominations can be found in two parts, here and here. If, however, you’d rather check out The Rap Sheet’s conveniently archived roster of crime novels deserving of renewed attention, that can be found here.