I was born the week Bill Haley's "We're Gonna Rock Around the
Clock" hit
#1 in 1955. I started mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown and
Emil and the Detectives (my initial discovery that the book
is almost always better than the movie).
I moved on to the Hardy Boys (loved their How To book in
particular), then plowed straight through my father's two
volume collected Sherlock Holmes. I read a few Christies,
which did nothing for me and my mystery reading had pretty
much narrowed down to Batman comics when an offhand comment
by my Freshman English instructor led me to read The Long
Goodbye.
I was hooked, read everything I could find by Chandler, then
moved on to the few Hammetts that were then in print. I
discovered a now-long-gone used mystery store, X Marks the
Spot. There I found a number of the Dell and Mercury Hammett
collections. Also, X himself turned me on to Latimer (the
expurgated Fifth Grave), John Evans/Howard Browne and the two
Kanes, Henry and Frank, among others. For some reason, I had
to discover Ross Macdonald on my own.
I read almost exclusively private eyes, did not even taste
the sorta private eyes like Travis McGee until much later.
When I did find McGee, I plowed through them in order (about
12 or 13 at the time), followed closely by my roommate and
girlfriend. I have still read only a few of MacDonald's
non-series books, a gap I really should do something
about.
At about the same point, I found a couple of Stark's Parkers.
I would have plowed straight through those, but it was during
one of those frustratingly long periods when they were out of
print, so it took me years to find them all. I read each as I
found it, but when I completed the set I read them all in
order and got even more out of them.
It is embarrassing how recent I started reading some of the
masters of the paperback originals like Thompson and
Goodis.
And this list never ceases to throw out names I feel
compelled to run to the used stores to try to find. Seldom
have I been disappointed by these additions.
Mark
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