You can finish these crime novels in a single day

[SeamusBellamy]

Originally published at: You can finish these crime novels in a single day | Boing Boing

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[anon61221983]

A book should be as long as it needs to be to tell you its story.

[FGD135]

[ChuckV]

I hope Encyclopedia Brown made the list.

[anon34399329]

You could add anything by Donald E. Westlake or his tougher-guy persona Richard Stark to that list and make it even more awesome…

[GilbertWham]

I can finish pretty much any crime novel in a day. Or most any book that’s not an Umberto Eco-grade doorstop.

[robertmckenna]

Thanks for bringing that list to our attention. It looks fantastic. I’m currently reading early genre fiction and one of the things it often suffers from is they were paid by the page. It reminds me of modern TV which also suffers from the potboiler effect.

That said I’m a third of the way through the count of Monte Christo and I must admit a couple of times I’ve stayed up a bit to get to the next bit!

I think that the journalistic style developed in America in the late 19th early 20th century informed a lot of what we think is good writing now. I approve. Cain or Chandler or Hammett are much more readable than Wilkie Collins for example.

I will definitely be reading some of these that I haven’t already.