Really? That Many Already?

As hard as this is for me to believe, it was a year ago that The Rap Sheet inaugurated its “Books You Have to Read” series, a companion to blogger-author Patti Abbott’s Friday “forgotten books” series. Since then, Rap Sheet contributors and a more substantial number of published authors have produced 51 posts about must-read crime novels, many of those no longer in print.

Before we dive into the second set of 50 nominations, let’s take a moment to recap which works have already been championed. Below, you’ll find the book titles and authors, with the names of people who’ve commented on those novels in parentheses:

• Sympathy for the Devil, by Kent Anderson (John Shannon)
• The Quiet Strangers, by John Buxton Hilton (Stephen Booth)
• Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman, by E.W. Hornung (Chris Ewan)
• No Orchids for Miss Blandish, by James Hadley Chase
(James R. Benn)
• War Against the Mafia, by Don Pendleton (Matt Hilton)
• Daddy Cool, by Donald Goines (Gary Phillips)
• Edith’s Diary, by Patricia Highsmith (Jason Starr)
• Night of the Panther, by E.C. Ayres (J. Kingston Pierce)
• Death of a Unicorn, by Peter Dickinson (Keith Raffel)
• The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton (Anthony Rainone)
• The Bigger They Come, by A.A. Fair (J. Kingston Pierce)
• Death of a Citizen, by Donald Hamilton (Rob Kantner)
• The Double Take, by Roy Huggins (J. Kingston Pierce)
• The Overseer, by Jonathan Rabb (Simon Wood)
• A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler (Ali Karim)
• The Scarf, by Robert Bloch (John Peyton Cooke)
• The Ebony Tower, by John Fowles (Michael G. Jacob)
• The Grifters, by Jim Thompson (Chris Knopf)
• A Clubbable Woman, by Reginald Hill (Simon Wood)
• The Bloody Bokhara, by William Campbell Gault (David Fulmer)
• Journey into Fear, by Eric Ambler (Charles Cumming)
• Despair, by Vladimir Nabokov (Robert Eversz)
• Marathon Man, by William Goldman (Linwood Barclay)
• Mayhem, by J. Robert Janes (Cara Black)
• The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov (Jane Finnis)
• The 12:30 from Croydon, by Freeman Wills Crofts
(Dolores Gordon-Smith)
• The Golden Crucible, by Jean Stubbs (Amy Myers)
• Rilke on Black, by Ken Bruen (Tony Black)
• The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey (Judith Cutler)
• Nine Times Nine, by Anthony Boucher (Jeffrey Marks)
• The Three Coffins, by John Dickson Carr (Edward Marston)
• Some Must Watch, by Ethel Lina White (Mary Reed)
• The Golden Gate Murders, by Peter King (Anthony Flacco)
• The Big Bow Mystery, by Israel Zangwill (Will Thomas)
• Coffin’s Got the Dead Guy on the Inside, by Keith Snyder
(Timothy Hallinan)
• The Twisted Thing, by Mickey Spillane (Max Allan Collins)
• The Falling Man, by Mark Sadler (Robert J. Randisi)
• Don’t Cry for Me, by William Campbell Gault (Ed Gorman)
• No Human Involved, by Barbara Seranella (Louise Ure)
• Watcher in the Shadows, by Geoffrey Household (Mike Ripley)
• Cutter and Bone, by Newton Thornburg (Kirk Russell)
• Funeral in Berlin, by Len Deighton (Tony Broadbent)
• God’s Pocket, by Pete Dexter (David Corbett)
• Chinaman’s Chance, by Ross Thomas (Tim Maleeny)
• I Am the Cheese, by Robert Cormier (Steve Hockensmith)
• The Honest Dealer, by Frank Gruber (Dick Lochte)
• When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes, by Lawrence Block (Dick Adler)
• The January Corpse, by Neil Albert (Kevin Burton Smith)
• The Lunatic Fringe, by William L. DeAndrea (J. Kingston Pierce)
• Memoirs of an Invisible Man, by H.F. Saint (Ali Karim)

To take a gander at Abbott’s list of all the “forgotten books” that have been remarked upon, in The Rap Sheet as well as elsewhere in the blogosphere, during the last 12 months, click here.

And if you are interested in contributing to The Rap Sheet’s series, please drop me a line.