Pelecanos’ Picks

For Newsweek, author George Pelecanos (The Turnaround) identifies what he thinks are the five most important crime novels of all time, though his definition of “important” isn’t entirely clear from his too-brief write-ups about each book. You can look at his list yourself, but I’ll tell you right now that Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye (1953) and James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss (1978) both made the cut. And none of the books features a dog, a cat, a sheep, or any other kind of animal in the detective role.