What are the Best Mystery Novels of the Past 25 Years?

Over 25 years have passed since 1990 when the Crime Writers' Association of Britain compiled their list of the 100 Best Mystery Novels. It has been 20 years since the Mystery Writers of America undertook a similar effort. These lists, which included several entries that are short story collections, have been commented on and analyzed in past posts.

The lists.
Analyses.

This post presents the question: What novels of recent years are worthy to be included on a list of the best mystery novels? Combined, the 1990 and 1995 lists contained 156 novels spanning approximately 130 years. Therefore, it seems reasonable to add at least one novel for each year. How to narrow down a list to 26 entries? 

Below are the main competitors. I have unfairly included only one novel per author and even with this limitation the number swells rapidly to over fifty. 

One of the greater points of contention is why I chose a particular volume to represent an author's work. I did have a method, albeit a flawed one. I looked for the highest ratings on Goodreads among the top vote-getters for a particular author. Other times, I included the first in a series because that work defined them.

I tried to keep this list impersonal. I have read approximately half of these and could not judge those I did not read, and I did include several which were popular, but not my favorites.

Automatic Inclusions:

• The Firm by John Grisham (1991)
•  Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Moseley (1990)

These two are the sole mysteries on the MWA list that were published too late to be considered for the CWA list.

The Juggernauts.

Often when a book is too successful, it invites scorn. Other times it is worthy of every sale.
(This list, along with the others, is alphabetical by author)

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2002)
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
• Millennium series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. . .) by Stieg Larssen (2005-2007)
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002)
• Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2001) Although lesser known than the above choices, this is the second best-selling novel in the history of Spain, after Don Quixote, and one of the top 90 best-selling books (not just novels) of all time.

People's Choice.

Other quality works that were immensely popular or are representative of best-selling authors.

• The Alienist by Caleb Carr (1994)
• Worth Dying For by Lee Child (2010)
• Tell No One by Harlan Coben (2001)
• All That Remains by Patricia Cornwell (1992)
• The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver  (2006)
• One for the Money by Janet Evanovich (1994)
• In the Woods by Tana French (2007)
• Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins (2015)
• Kiss The Girls by James Patterson (1995)
• The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (2002)
• Buried Prey by John Sandford (2011)
• The #1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (1998)

Other Acknowledged Masters.

My intent for this group is to include representative works from others who are acknowledged as the best in the field. Some of these could qualify as people's choice above while others peaked below the bestseller lists.

• Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by MC Beaton (1992)
• The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke (2010)
• Loves Music, Loves to Dance by Mary Higgins Clark (1992)
• The Black Echo by Michael Connelly (1992)
• The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook (1996)
• L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy (1990)
• M is for Malice by Sue Grafton (1996)
• Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg (1992)
• Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (2003)
• The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey (1991)
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (2005)
• The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø, Don Bartlett (2000)
• The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell  (1998)
• 1974 by David Peace (1999)
• Right As Rain by George Pelecanos (2001)
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (2011)
• Clock Watchers by Richard Price (1992)
• A Simple Plan by Scott Smith (1993)
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
• Affinity by Sarah Waters  (1999)

Masters in the Later Parts of their Careers.

Although most of these authors were included on the MWA and CWA lists, they continued to put out memorable works.

• The Cat Who Came to Breakfast by Lilian Jackson Braun (1994)
• To the Hilt by Dick Francis (1996)
• The Private Patient by P.D. James (2008)
• The Constant Gardener by John le Carré (2000)
• Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard (1990)
• Body Work by Sara Paretsky (2010)
• Night Passage by Robert B Parker (1997)
• Anna's Book by Barbara Vine (1993)

 

Mixed-Genre.

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)
• Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris (2001)
• The City and the City by China Mieville (2009)
• Naked In Death by JD Robb (1995)

If Non-Fiction is Considered.

• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story by John Berendt (1994)
• And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi (1991)
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (2003)
• Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (1991)

MWJ

The Mystery Writers of Japan did update their list of best Western mystery novels in 2012. Below are the choices that were published after the 1990 cut-off of the CWA list. Many of these are already listed above.

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown  (2003)
• The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook  (1996)
• The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver  (1997)
• The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver  (2006)
• White Jazz by James Ellroy (1992)
• Point of Impact  by Stephen Hunter  (1993)
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro  (2005)
• Millennium series by Stieg Larsson  (2005-2007)
• Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon  (1991)
• The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell  (1998)
• The Big Blowdown  by George Pelecanos (1996)
• Flicker  by Theodore Roszak (1991)
• A Simple Plan by Scott Smith (1993)
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (2008)
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
• Affinity by Sarah Waters  (1999)
• A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow (1991)
• The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow (2005)

If you do consider two or more entries from worthy authors (as did MWJ), this combination of lists could grow into 100 mystery novels in the past 26 years.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook editions through Amazon and other online retailers.
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Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

Back page blurb of A Predator's Game.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, will be available from Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016. It features Nikola Tesla as detective.

His recent mystery, Never Kill A Friend, is available from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

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Mystery Authors List Their Favorite Mysteries, Part Four

Today's lists continue with those presented in The Armchair Detective's Book of Lists.

Aaron Elkins

Bone detectives, museum curators and professional golfers are among the detective-protagonists of Elkins award-winning novels.

Death of a Mystery Writer by Robert Barnard (1979)
The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie (1936)
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin (1946)
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
Forfeit by Dick Francis (1969)
Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman (1963)
The Case of Sonia Wayward by Michael Innes (1960)
Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngiao Marsh (1972)
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (1975)

John Gardner (Favorite Espionage Novels)

Along with a productive career writing about spies of his own creation, John Gardner continued the story of Professor Moriarty and in another series, the adventures of James Bond. 

Berlin Game by Len Deighton (1983)
Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton (1964)
Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius (1987)
Smiley's People by John Le Carré (1980)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré (1963)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré (1974)
The Better Angels by John McCarry (1979)
The Secret Lovers by John McCarry (1977)
The Tears of Autumn by John McCarry (1975)
The Beria Papers by Alan Williams (1973)

Michael Malone

Michael Malone is the author of a series of Justin and Cuddy mysteries set in small-town North Carolina.

Who is Teddy Villanova by Thomas Berger (1977)
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler (1940)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)
Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner (1948)
The Deep Blue Good-by by John MacDonald (1964)
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Chandler (1934)
The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout (1935)
Chinaman's Chance by Ross Thomas (1978)

Marcia Muller

Muller has written over thirty novels featuring the PI Sharon McCone along with a dozen more mysteries. 

The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler (1943)
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (1953)
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1930)
Ripley Underground by Patricia Highsmith (1970)
Listening Woman by Tony Hillerman (1978)
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes (1947)
Ride the Pale Horse by Dorothy Hughes (1946)
Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald (1966)
Black Money by Ross Macdonald (1966)
The Wycherly Woman by Ross Macdonald (1961)

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. His mystery, Never Kill A Friend, will be available June 27th from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition.

To Be Continued.

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Word Count Van Helsing, Part Two.

Who Killed the Short Mystery Novel?

In the first post in this series, I described the methods by which I assembled a database of word counts for the top mystery novels. I summarized my findings regarding the entries appearing on the Crime Writers' Association and the Mystery Writers of America compilations of the 100 best mystery novels. Both of these lists were assembled in the 1990s, before the great list-flood of the internet in the ought-oughts and provide an idea as to which mystery novels are considered the best of the best. In this post, I will discuss my findings in more detail. I have also calculated numbers from the past fifty-five years of Edgar Award winners which I will begin to present here.

One of the conclusions which startled me is how many of the entries among the compilation of the greatest mystery novels were short novels: 38% of the CWA and MWA novels contained under 70,000 words. For those of you without an instinctive sense of word count numbers, the cut-off of 70,000 words worked out (on average) to be about 240 pages -- although this figure should be taken with a grain of salt: the page length of novels vary between editions.

The four novels at the top of the CWA/MWA list averaged under 59,000 words: Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time; John le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold; Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep; and, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Each of these works were lean and perfect: I did not feel cheated when I finished reading them.

The shortest "novels" ran 35,000 words or less: The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity by James M. Cain; The Third Man by Graham Greene.

The 70K Barrier.

Now, to back up a bit, several sites will advise mystery writers that 70,000 words is the bare minimum of words that an aspiring author should aim for. This advice is from Chuck Sambuchino of Writers Digest:

     "Now, speaking broadly, you can have as few as 71,000 words and as many as 109,000 words. Below 70,000: Too short"
 
This is from a post by Jessica Faust of the BookEnds Literary Agency.

      "In the case of mysteries 70,000 to 90,000 words will likely work for you."

And from the Literary Rejections blog:

      "Mysteries / Thrillers / Suspense: 70,000 to 90,000."

With this tide of counsel, burgeoning authors might well be shy away from presenting a shorter work -- and that may be a good idea. Another way of looking at this is from the practical sense. If, for whatever reason, publishers today don't want shorter works, the agents are doing right by advising their prospective clients to bulk up their 60K novels. But should a prejudice against shorter works exist?

Note: some advice-givers make an allowance for short cozy mysteries. I can't claim to recognize the category of all of the CWA/MWA entries, but I did read the brief summaries of each (I performed an analysis of who were heroes and who were villains) and, with one or two exceptions, the lists seemed virtually cozy-free. I, The Jury, was not a cozy mystery.

So what happened to the short mystery novel?

It seems remarkable that such a dominant art form should all but disappear. Let's ask the first question: When did the short mystery novel disappear?

Or, from the flip side of the coin: when were those short novels published? The CWA/MWA list breaks down as follows.




     Selections refers to the total number of selections in the CWA/MWA list for the given time period. 
     Undetermined refers to the number of novels for which word counts could not be determined.
     Mean word count is derived from those novels with determined word counts.
     <70K are the number of novels in the given time period with less than 70,000 words.
     Percent <70K is the percentage of novels (with determined word counts) which were less than 70,000 words in the given time period.

A data-geek like me goes squee! any time the data actually tell a defined story. From the above table it can be seen that novels that were less than 70,000 words comprised a good chunk of the mystery novels published between 1900 and 1979 (cumulatively 48% of those recognized as being the best by the MWA and CWA). For the 1980s, which was represented by 30 books with word counts, only 10% were under 70k. 

What is even more remarkable is that the 1970s with 24 books with word counts, twelve were under 71,000 words, while the other twelve averaged 123,723 words. A divergence was occurring. The short punchy works like those of Westlake and McBain coexisted with Lawrence Sanders' The First Deadly Sin (220,338 words) and le Carré (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 117,251 words and Smiley's People, 131,244 words). 

Note: the prior volume by Lawrence Sanders, The Anderson Tapes had 78,077 words while Le Carré's previous outing with George Smiley was 68,355 words (The Looking Glass War).

The Edgar Award Winners.

A reader might say, okay, CWA/MWA lists cover the span of the history of mystery novels but these lists were composed in the 1990s and half of the selections on the list were written before 1962. What's been going on more recently? I decided to examine the last 55 years of the Edgar Award Winners for Best Novel and Best First Novel to look at how these trends might or might not extend to the present day. First Novels first.

Decades back, the Edgar Award for the First Novel maintained an eerie prescience in selecting authors who would go on to achieve great fame. (It may be doing this today, however it's too early to divine the career arc for the recent winners.) A sampling of winners from the time period of 1961 to 1980:

Year    First novel award winner. Measures of success.
1961    Jack Vance. 11 mystery titles. Over 80 Sci-fi novels.
1963    Robert L. Fish. 33 books. The Edgars now present the Robert L. Fish award.
1965    Harry Kemelman, 12 highly popular novels.
1967    Ross Thomas. 25 novels.
1968    Michael Collins. 80 novels.
1970    Joe Gores. 23 books, many shorts.
1971     Lawrence Sanders. 36 novels.
1975    Gregory McDonald. 25 novels (Only 9 starred Fletch).
1976    Rex Burns. 17 novels and counting.
1977    James Patterson. Nobody knows what became of him. (All right, over 130 novels, 16 in 2014 alone.)
1979    William L. DeAndrea. 19 novels, 3 Edgars.
1980    Richard North Patterson. 22 novels.

I will go into the numbers in detail in my next post, but for now it suffices to note that  the last ten years of the Edgars, zero of the First Novel Award winners had page counts of less than 300. This trend among the First Novel winners goes back to 1981. From 1981 to 2014, the novels averaged 355 pages. The twenty-two First Novel Award winners (one tie) between 1960 and 1980 averaged 229 pages with exactly one novel of over 300 pages. In the past twenty-five years, not one of the Best Mystery Novel winner of the Edgars has been under 300 pages. Which leads me to the conclusion: The short mystery novel died in 1981!


 
Coming up: Word Count Van Helsing, Part Three. The Unusual Suspects and the Killer(s).

The CWA/MWA lists ordered by year.
 

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