My recommendations for my "blown away" writers:
HAMMETT: *The Maltese Falcon* is his best novel, but Hammett
was primarily a short story writer. The recent collection,
*Nightmare Town* is probably the easiest to obtain and has a
nice mix of his Op and non-Op work. *The Dain Curse* is not
his best Op novel, but, of the three Op novels, it is the
best example of Hammett's method of constructing a
full-length book out of semi-autonomous short stories. Our
current assignment, *Red Harvest*, is his best Op
novel.
CHANDLER: *The Big Sleep* and *The Long Goodbye* are his best
novels. The collection *Killer in the Rain* gives the best
insight into his writing method.
McBAIN: My favorite has always been *The Heckler* which
introduced the Deaf Man, McBain's "Moriarty" figure. *The
Pusher* was my first and was the book that give me that
"blown away" feeling.
WAINWRIGHT: An extraordinarily prolific writer, his best
book, and one of the best cop books ever written, is *All on
a Summer's Day*, about a particularly busy 24-hr. period in
the "life" of a large police force.
HAMILTON: Without denigrating subsequent books in the series,
*Death of a Citizen*, which introduced Matt Helm, is my
favorite. In this book Hamilton combines the two most popular
types of protagonists of spy fiction, the amateur who is
unwittingly swept into a spy plot (a la Buchan's *39 Steps*
or Hitchcock's various film versions of that book), and the
tough professional agent (a la Durell, Bond, Quiller, etc.)
into one figure, suburban husband and father (and former
counter-intelligenge killer) Matt Helm. The dichotomy was
fascinating.
JIM DOHERTY
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