The “Perfect” Crimes

Britain’s Daily Telegraph may not be the best arbiter of what people ought to be reading; indeed, it’s recent list of “Fifty Crime Writers to Read Before You Die” had so many holes in it, that those of us here at The Rap Sheet are developing a rival list of our own. But at least the newspaper’s commitment to book reading is demonstrated by its editors producing such lists.

Their latest effort at influencing reading habits is to catalogue what they believe are 110 books that would together constitute “The Perfect Library.” Some of the choices are pretty obvious (David Copperfield, 1984, Frankenstein, One Hundred Years of Solitude), while others have been lumped into “supercategories” (Books That Changed the World, Books That Changed Your World) that somehow make them sound less approachable than they really are.

With its crime-fiction picks, the Telegraph suggests, unfortunately, that this genre’s best days are behind it. None of these titles debuted later than 1989, and most come from the mid-20th century:

The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley is one of 20th-century literature’s most disturbingly fascinating characters: a suave, charming serial killer, who’s utterly amoral in his pursuit of la dolce vita.

The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett

A tale of greed and deceit that’s also the archetypal work of 20th-century detective fiction: complete with flawed hero (Sam Spade), femme fatale and a convoluted plot that unravels grippingly.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It’s one of literature’s most wonderful ironies that Conan Doyle himself became a spiritualist so soon after creating the most famously rational character in all literature.

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

His oeuvre may be small, but with the help of long-time protagonist P.I. Philip Marlowe--who appears here for the first time--Chandler helped define the genres of detective fiction and, later, film noir.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
John le Carré

Le Carré, master of the Cold War novel, follows British spymaster George Smiley as he tries to uncover a Moscow mole, and faces his KGB nemesis, Karla.

Red Dragon
Thomas Harris

Hannibal Lecter’s second literary appearance sees him called upon by old FBI chum (and near-victim) Will Graham, to help solve the case of the serially morbid ‘Tooth Fairy’.

Murder on the Orient Express
Agatha Christie

From Istanbul to London, Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells rattle away to improbable effect as he untangles the mystery of the life and violent death of a sinister passenger.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s blackly ingenious tale of brutal murder in 19th-century Paris establishes C. Auguste Dupin, a man of ‘peculiar analytic ability’, as the model for pretty much every intellectual detective to come.

The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins

A sensational 19th-century epistolary tale of women in peril adds one of the most charismatic, refined and straightforwardly fat villains to the pantheon.

Killshot
Elmore Leonard

Leonard is known for his pithy dialogue and freaky characters. Here he manages to create a sweatily suspenseful thriller, with a married couple as the unexpected heroes.

You’ll find the paper’s full, 110-story list here.

(Hat tip to Marshal Zeringue’s Campaign for the American Reader.)