De-lurking to answer...
>I'm curious about your ages and reading
history.
I'm 45. I got to crime fiction in a
roundabout way. When I was in junior high, my uncle gave me
THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES for Christmas, and I was
fascinated. But there wasn't much crime fiction in the house.
My dad liked spy and war novels, so it was on to Ian Fleming,
Richard Mason's THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, Lederer and
Burdick's THE UGLY AMERICAN, and some Norman Mailer. I think
there was a Mickey Spillane in there somewhere. Most of high
school and college I spent in a love affair with southern
fiction.
While living in Italy in the 1980s I had access only to
Italian-language books. I thought that crime fiction would be
fairly easy to read. However, Italians don't write much of
it, and English and American crime fiction does not translate
well into Italian. But the Inspector Maigret series by
Simenon went easily from French to Italian, and so I read
everything in the Maigret series that was available. Back in
the states, I read it all again, in English. Soon after that
I came across a book by Arthur Upfield, and became as
entranced by his Australia as by Simenon's France. I've since
re-read the Holmes stories, and I went through period of
reading pre-War English mysteries (Marsh, Sayers,
Innes).
My interest in crime fiction is eclectic. I've read Chandler,
Hammett, and Ross MacDonald, and I follow Michael Connelly,
Dennis Lehane, Greg Rucka, K.C. Constantine, and Archer
Mayor. I was intrigued by Michael Pye's TAKING LIVES (a
grisly "psychological"), but don't know if I'd read another
of his; I read Crumley's THE LAST GOOD KISS and didn't think
it fulfilled the promise of its beginning. I've been lurking
on RARA-AVIS to get ideas for what to read in the hard-boiled
subgenre. I just found an old paperback of Thompson's THE
KILLER INSIDE ME and was duly impressed; I'll be looking for
more of his books.
--Karen
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