The Big Four: Round Two

You still have a day and half to enter The Rap Sheet’s latest and biggest-yet giveaway contest. The prizes up for grabs are four free copies of the new Mike Hammer detective novel, The Big Bang, written by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, plus four free copies of the latest original Hammer radio novel on CD, “The Little Death.”

To participate in this competition, all you need do is submit a list of your four favorite private-eye novels. The deadline for entering is midnight tomorrow, Friday, May 21. Complete contest details can be found here.

We already posted the first sampling of entries to this challenge. Today, we bring you another 17 lists of what this blog’s readers believe are the best P.I. novels ever written. There are occasional efforts in these “Big Four” rundowns to stretch (or even subvert) the definition of a private-eye story, but we are not going to be too strict about that. We’re just curious to know what books everybody has been enjoying. And perhaps these lists will inspire some people who’ve read less widely, to take chances on authors or works they have eschewed in the past.

Gary Thaden of Minneapolis, Minnesota:

• The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
• Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley
• Fer-de-Lance, by Rex Stout

Ed Henley of Baltimore, Maryland:

• The Chill, by Ross Macdonald
• Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett
• Little Scarlet, by Walter Mosley
• Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais

Barry Pateman of Albany, California:

• The Ivory Grin, by Ross Macdonald
• Hollywood and Levine, by Andrew Bergman
• October Heat, by Gordon DeMarco
• Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley

Thomas Coady of Brooklyn, New York:

• Eight Million Ways to Die, by Lawrence Block
• The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
• Sunset Express, by Robert Crais
• The Lonely Silver Rain, by John D. MacDonald

David Gauthreaux of Westwego, Louisiana:

• A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler
• The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
• A Corpse in the Koryo, by James Church
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

Pat Lee of Tustin, California:

• The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
• I, the Jury, by Mickey Spillane
• The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
• Looking for Rachel Wallace, by Robert B. Parker

Graham Powell of Fort Worth, Texas:

• The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
• The Wrong Case, by James Crumley
• Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go, by George Pelecanos
• Gone, Baby, Gone, by Dennis Lehane

“Not a whole lot of happy endings there,” adds Powell. “Wonder what
that says about me?”

Gary Dobbs, Porth, South Wales, United Kingdom:

• The Godwulf Manuscript, by Robert B. Parker
• The Guards, by Ken Bruen
• Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler
• Gone Fishing, by Walter Mosley

Terrill Lankford of Woodland Hills, California:

• The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
• The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
• The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley
• Blackheart Highway, by Richard Barre

Rick Helms of Weddington, North Carolina:

• The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
• Early Autumn, by Robert B. Parker
• Empty Ever After, by Reed Farrell Coleman
• Winter and Night, by S.J. Rozan

Keith Raffel of Palo Alto, California:

• The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
• The Drowning Pool, by Ross Macdonald
• Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley
• Red Cat, by Peter Spiegelman

Peter Guzzo of Powell, Ohio:

• Free Fall, by Robert Crais
• Big City, Bad Blood, by Sean Chercover
• The Sins of the Father, by Lawrence Block
• Promised Land, by Robert B. Parker

Harvey Dinerstein of Winthrop, Maine:

• Scattershot, by Bill Pronzini (“actually any early ’80s Nameless books, but I picked this from 1982”)
• Sugartown, by Loren D. Estleman
• When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block
• Hell to Pay, by George Pelecanos

William H. Hamilton of Honolulu, Hawaii:

• The Godwulf Manuscript, by Robert B. Parker (“his first and
most memorable”)
• Stalking the Angel, by Robert Crais
• Contract Null and Void, by Joe Gores
• Strawberry Sunday, by Stephen Greenleaf
• The Mexican Tree Duck, by James Crumley

Paul Bishop of Camarillo, California:

• Early Autumn, by Robert B. Parker
• Whip Hand, by Dick Francis
• Embrace the Wolf, by Benjamin M. Schutz
• Just Another Day in Paradise, by A.E. Maxwell

John Stickney of Fairview Park, Ohio:

• The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
• Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler
• Come Die with Me, by William Campbell Gault
• The Goodbye Look, by Ross Macdonald

David Komaniecki of Chicago, Illinois:

• The Dark Fantastic, by Stanley Ellin
• Angels Flight, by Michael Connolly
• City of Bones, by Michael Connolly
• Road to Perdition, by Max Allan Collins

So, do you think you’re up to the challenge of submitting your own “Big Four” list of favorite private-eye novels? Then enter The Rap Sheet’s new competition now--before it’s too late. What can you lose? And we’ve already told you what you could win!