Detective Novel Series: Start of a List

Totally weird, and also very funny. There are some good plots, too, and some very violent and bloody scenes. The police are under Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer, who is a serious character, and among others include the clowns Auden and Spencer and the Irish-Chinese O'Yee. The books are set in Hong Kong, in a fictional slum called Hong Bay, before the handover of the Crown Colony to the Chinese (which the last book is about). The author is self-indulgent with peculiar stylistic tricks that are disconcerting until you get used to them: uncompleted sentences and repetitive phrases ("He saw -- He felt time. He felt it. Time... He felt it. He felt it given. He --") -- this becomes irritating, to say the least. Bear with it and press on!

Yellowthread Street series

• Yellowthread Street (1975)
• The Hatchet Man (1976)
• Gelignite (1976)
• Thin Air (1977)
• Skulduggery (1979)
• *Sci-fi (1981)
• Perfect End (1981)
• War Machine (1982)
• *The Far Away Man (1984)
• Roadshow (1985)
• Head First (1986)
• Frogmouth (1987)
• *Out of Nowhere (1988)
• Inches (1994)
• Nightmare Syndrome (1997)
• To The End (1998)

Apart from the irritating pretence that the imaginary city of Isola where these books are set is not really New York City turned sideways, this is probably the best long-running series in mystery history (apart from Perry Mason, or to go to a lower level, Nick Carter, Nancy Drew, Doc Savage, The Shadow, etc.). McBain (Evan Hunter) has established himself as the prime source for all your Hill Street Blues, LA Law, and other TV cop shows, which are so popular because they are so 'nitty-gritty', whatever that means. People think they are seeing/reading the real thing; I even know some NYC cops who say so -- although they point out that most of their job is just plain boring, with lots of work but nothing usually more exciting than filling out reports and waiting around to testify in courts on cases that end up with a cop-out plea (excuse the term). There are something like 50 books in this series now, not all consistently good but some really classic. They are all eminently readable, especially given that they are formulaic, which is not an authorial sin -- viz. Perry Mason, etc.

Best examples: I'm going to cop out on this one because it is so hard to figure out one's favorites. There are ALWAYS some in print, so just pick up one, and don't be disturbed when you read more that as in all long-running series there are repetitive capsule summaries of the various repertory cast. Some of the interesting recurring characters are Steve Carella (the main point-of-view person), Meyer Meyer, Cotton Hawes, Fat Ollie Weeks, and many others whose omission I hope does not offend anybody. For a checklist of 87th Precinct books, click here.

Other Series: Matthew Hope. A Florida lawyer, erstwhile investigator, had a short series (for McBain) based on nursery-story titles. They fall under the Travis McGee aegis (Florida real-estate scams and things of that sort), but are very good of this type. Hope, and the author, finally realized that his detection days were worn out, so he has been 'discontinued'.
Evan Hunter. McBain's 'real name' (although who knows what it really is, since he comes from an Italian-American background). This is his serious novelist name, but the works include some crime stories and lately a lot of cross-references with the McBain books. He is, I think, one of the best living American writers, but only time and English-lit classes will tell. Update: Ed McBain died in early 2005, sad to say.

South Africa is a rare setting for police procedurals, but this one is a triumph. This a rather short series (considering it spans 20 years) about Lieutenant Kramer and his Bantu assistant Zondi: Kramer with his Widow Fourie and Zondi with his wife Miriam and his zoot suit. While the setting is exotic enough, especially since it takes place in the days of Apartheid, the characters are a mix of all classes, from low-life and poor blacks (putting up with appalling living conditions) to rich Anglos and bourgeois Boers; the crimes are usually gruesome, the books are well-plotted and clued, and many scenes both dramatic and surprising. McClure writes well, and with wit and nice imagery ("the large eyes seemed too open and vulnerable, like windows without any glass in them"); some of his incidental police act like Keystone Kops and go for the third degree, especially with 'kaffirs'. A scene like the following is characteristic, although it is a cliché of detective fiction to have crusty medical examiners.

   'What requisition sheet?' snapped Dr Strydom, lifting out Naomi Stride's brain.
   'Ach, the one I handed to you last Wednesday, of course,' said Sergeant Van Rensburg, picking bone dust from the teeth of the saw he used to take off the tops of heads. "I'm getting really short of some of the stuff on it -- you know, stitching thread, DH-136, sample-bottles, all sorts. Can't you just sign it, Doc?'
   'I've already signed it!'
   'You couldn't have, because ---'
   'Do you two never stop arguing?' said Colonel Muller, looking up with a frown from the midday paper.

Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and one doesn't associate it with crime (although some of the most infamous crimes of the past occurred there). Here is an antidote for that, although it shouldn't lead one to believe that this city's slums are worse than the ones of Glasgow or London, Liverpool or Manchester. Inspector Rebus is the hard-line, alcoholic, manic-depressive maverick cop detective-story fans prefer in this type of book, and they are justified in this series. One of those sarcastic, but witty, bastards who are the bane of their superiors, a loner, and a friend, sort-of, of the meanest villains in the city. Like the prostitute with the heart of gold, he is one of those transcendant characters of legend, flawed as an individual but a great cop and an astute detective. The stories fall into the noir category, and are rather depressing (but not so much as similar writers such as John Harvey and Derek Raymond). The books develop over time, new characters, changing relationships, etc. but do not have to be read in any particular order to be appreciated on their own. Note that as a part-Scot I am treating Scotland as a separate country, hence this entry is on the Cops page rather than the British Police page. Rankin is currently the most popular crime writer in the UK.

Martin Beck is a Swedish CID Chief Inspector whose squad room contains series characters such as Kollberg (Beck's fat sidekick), Larsson (gigantic and boorish), Melander (he of the elephantine memory and weak bladder), and many others who are as distinctively portrayed as similar characters in the 87th Precinct. (A nice touch is that each of them is given an opportunity to shine in one story or another; also that the differences between Stockholm and Malmö and other places in Sweden are made clear to those who don't know anything about that country and might think it is homegeneous.)

Beck appeared in a series of ten books, which was apparently intentional from the beginning. The resemblance to an American squad room is more striking than the differences supplied by the 'foreign' setting, except as is not surprising for Sweden, there is somewhat more emphasis on social mores and politics. Another distinguishing feature is Beck's dyspepsia and constant colds, his miserable marriage, and his weltschmertz; but there are some good comic touches too, such as the patrol-car cops Kristiansson and Kvant. These are accurate procedural books in that detection is by intensive police work as opposed to much deduction (though Beck has inspirations). The Laughing Policeman ("Den skrattande polisen") is the most famous of the novels (and probably the best), and was made into a good movie featuring Walter Mathau as Beck inexplicably transformed into a San Francisco cop. The books should be read as a 'unit', in order ("Balcony" and "Smoke" should be reversed, as the latter took place chronologically before the other, though published a year after), the main reason being that the social criticism about cops and society becomes more and more embittered. In the later books some of the most hilarious comedy is interspersed with both satire and shocking violence. The main characters also evolve and change over time. Probably one of the best procedural series ever written, ranking with McBain, Gideon of the Yard (Creasey), and the Yellowthread Street Station series set in Hong Kong (Marshall).

The Books (1965-1975): Roseanna*, The Man on the Balcony, The Man Who Went up in Smoke, The Laughing Policeman*, The Fire Engine That Disappeared, Murder at the Savoy, The Abominable Man,
The Locked Room*, Cop Killer*, and The Terrorists*.     [* outstanding]

Arthur Upfield was an Englishman who emigrated to Australia, did all the 'right' things (worked as a swagman on a sheep ranch, etc.), and went on to write a great many mysteries about the half-Aboriginal detective Napoleon Bonaparte (named thus after the book he tried to eat when first taken to the foundling hospital). Bony is one of the most interesting detectives in the genre, combining intellectualism and logical thinking (from his white father's roots) with bush savvy and infinite patience (from his Aboriginal mother's roots); this may be considered old-fashioned racial preconception, but if taken on its own merit leads to some very good detective stories, ranging from the relatively straitforward (The New Shoe -- murder in an old lighthouse) to the extremely exotic (Death of a Lake -- an incredible setting!). His normal method -- which his superiors tolerate with some exasperation -- is to take on a months-old case going nowhere, go undercover as a swagman or other itinerant laborer, and trace down the solution by getting to know the characters and environment intimately and using his honed bush skills (tracking, 'shamanistic vision', etc.). Almost all of his books take place in the Outback, with a few exceptions such as the 'cosy' An Author Bites the Dust (murder among a coterie of literary poseurs), and The Mystery of Swordfish Reef, which involves fishing boats. The writing is rather pedestrian, but that is made up for by the brilliant plots even when they tend to drag on a bit. As one who lives in Brooklyn, NY, the following (from The New Shoe) strikes me as almost exotic:

   The barking of the dogs dwindled to desultory complaint. In the tree branches above Bony a kookaburra throatily guffawed like a satisfied devil pleasantly dreaming. Then the silence pressed down upon the invisible earth until a sepulchral voice moaned:
   "Ma ... poke! Ma ... poke! Ma ... poke!"
   It was restful standing there against the excessively rough bark of the tree, only the watchful mopoke aware of him. This was Bony's world, where Time meant nothing and the lives of even the grandest men of no more moment than the nuptial flight of the termites.

Bony Buys a Woman is an excellent example of a later Upfield, with some really interesting play of wits between Bony and the Chief of a local aborginal tribe and an unforgetable trek across the mud flats of a dried-up lake that is in the process of being flooded, while Bony and three others are under sniper threat from the murderer. It shows Bony at his most typical in his methods of solving a crime.