I’ve been reading mysteries, mostly ones that are set in the British Isles, Ireland, and Europe for well over forty years now. My favourite series are set between The Wars, but I’m willing to read a well-written contemporary ones as well as ones well before that time including medieval ones such as the Brother Cadfael series that was written by Ellis Peters. Now how do I, like other lovers of this genre, find series and/or solo novels when we don’t know about ones we haven’t heard about?
Well we could haunt the net, reading websites, blogs, and asking friends what they like. The last would probably work better than the first two, but I like a well-written book that does that for me. And Books To Die For bears the subtitle of ‘The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels’ fits what I was looking for perfectly.
The book is organised chronologically from the oldest mystery covered, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Dupin Tales as discussed by J. Wallis Martin, publishing director of the Edgar Allan Poe Press, to Mark Gimenez’s The Perk which Anne Perry discusses, covering a period from 1841 to 2008 which most people says is the period of the mystery as we now do it. That’s one hundred and twenty mystery novels!
Each exceptionally well-written essay discusses both the writer and specific work with enough excerpts from the work to give us, the essay readers, a good feel for that work. Each writer according to the introduction by the editors picked their favourite mystery novel which is why some obvious choices as Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep aren’t here even though other Philip Marlowe novels are.
If you’ve been reading mysteries for sometime now, you’ll find much to appreciate here and as much to argue to with as well. I found a number of mysteries and writers such as Graham Greene that I’ve heard of but not read but will now, and A.S. Byatt whose Possesion I had not considered to be a mystery. Oh and EJohn Le Carre whose spy novels would normally outside of my comfort zone but who spy novels do sound interesting now.
All in all, a reference work that I’ll refer to time and time again which is why I’m high recommending it to any voracious reader of mysteries looking for novels that would be ones that you’d not normally consider.
(Emily Bestler Books, 2012)
