100 Books

Since I aspire to be a Great Mystery Novelist^TM, I feel it incumbent upon me to become as well-read as possible in the genre. To that end, I have been trying to find a definitive '100 Best Mystery Novels' list, and have discovered that there are many, each with its own slant. Since I'm constitutionally incapable of choosing one over another, I decided to compile my own.

Here's how I'm doing it: I downloaded every '100 Best' list with a mystery or crime theme that I could find. Then, I smushed them all together and removed the duplicates. This left me with a list of 500+ books. I went through that and culled out the ones I'd already read, putting the ones I thought worthy on my own '100 Best' list. The result is below, and what's left of the 500+ (now containing 229 titles) is my reading list. As I work my way through these 229, I will add the ones I think deserve it to my '100 Best' until it's got 100 titles on it. Then it will become a game of dueling 'bests.' I figure it should take me roughly 150 years.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are my biases: I don't like spy novels and like very few legal thrillers; Books with lots of this will be promptly thrown across the room; animal torture/killing is an automatic 'no;' and if a book has been made into a really great or really horrible movie or PBS series, I probably won't be much motivated to read it.

Your arguments and recommendations are welcome.

Minerva Koenig's 100 Best Mystery Novels
A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
Adam Dalgliesh series by P. D. James
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoyevsky
Deadly Edge by Richard Stark
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Die A Little by Megan Abbott
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
Ellery Queen series by Ellery Queen
Everything but the Squeal by Timothy Hallinan
Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard
Hercule Poirot series by Agatha Christie
Inspector Lynley series by Elizabeth George
In the Woods by Tana French
Jim Chee series by Tony Hillerman
Lew Archer series by Ross Macdonald
Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout
Night Train by Martin Amis
One for the Money by Janet Ivanovich
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
Philip Marlowe series by Raymond Chandler
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Ripley series by Patricia Highsmith
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Spenser series by Robert B. Parker
The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
The Woman in White by Wilke Collins
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Vanity Dies Hard by Ruth Rendell