Favourite crime novels written by female authors

For no apparent reason at all, I decided to list my favourite crime books written by woman writers. The list includes only books written originally in English, some of them have been translated, which is indicated in the list. I published this first in Facebook.

Vicki Hendricks: Miami Purity
Dolores Hitchens: Sleep with Slander
Elizabeth Sanxay Holding: The Blank Wall
Dorothy B. Hughes: In a Lonely Place (translated as Yksinäisessä paikassa, 1981)
Megan Abbott: The End of Everything
Celia Fremlin: The Hours Before Dawn (Hetket ennen aamunkoittoa, 1963)
 Margaret Millar: Like an Angel (Kuin enkeli, 1996)
Patricia Highsmith: The Cry of the Owl (Öinen huuto, 1998)
Gillian Flynn: Dark Places (Paha paikka, 2014)
Christa Faust: Money Shot & Choke Hold (Money Shot translated in Finnish as Koston enkeli, 2010)
Marisha Pessl: Night Film (Yönäytös, 2013)
Sarah Weinman (ed.): Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives

Bubbling under:

Dolores Hitchens: Footsteps in the Night (transl. as Askeleet yössä, 1962)
Doris Miles Disney: The Magic Grandfather (transl. as Kosto, 1969)
Lionel Shriver: We Need To Talk About Kevin
Sara Gran: Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

Ten best noir novels of the 21st century

Eric Beetner has a pretty good list. I've read five (Starr, Phillips, Zeltserman, Rector, Max Phillips), and also two of the ones bubbling under (Megan Abbott and James Sallis).

What did I say about noir in Hollywood in the 2010s?

Remember what I said about new noir films in Hollywood? See my post on Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners here.

I stumbled on a post at Hardboiled Wonderland listing the best crime films of the last year. Seems there are more noir or at least noirish crime films out there than I first realized. I hated The Counselor, but Jedidiah Ayres writes interestingly on other films he mentions. (Of course not all the films are Hollywood, but nevertheless.)

Modern Noir

Great Pinterest board by Brian Lindenmuth on Modern Noir. Lots of great books and lots of books I haven't read (some I haven't even heard of). Some I managed to get translated in Finnish.

My essential noir

The Psycho Noir blog has posted fascinating lists of essential noir novels by some writers and other noir aficionados. You can see the lists here. I posted my list on Facebook and thought I'd post it here as well. It's merely a scratch and I did it in a hurry and I'm sure it's missing many important titles. Hardboiled is not included, hence no Chandler, Hammett or Ross Macdonald. One late addition, not mentioned in Facebook, would be Reed Farrel Coleman's The James Deans - in it the ordinary PI stuff forms into a great and depressing noir read.

James M. Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice/Postimies soittaa aina kahdesti
Jason Starr: Fake ID (ilmestyy ensi vuonna suomeksi nimellä Väärä rooli)
Kevin Wignall: Who Is Conrad Hirst?/Kuka on Conrad Hirst?
Charles Willeford: The Director/The Woman Chaser
Dan J. Marlowe: One Endless Hour
Jim Thompson: possibly Killer Inside Me, but I've always liked The Getaway more (Tappaja sisälläni, Pakotie)
James Ellroy: The Big Nowhere/Suuri tyhjyys
Scott Phillips: The Ice Harvest/Jäätävää satoa
James Sallis: Drive/Kylmä kyyti
Vicki Hendricks: Miami Purity
Dave Zeltserman: Killer
Peter Raben The Anatomy of a Killer/Tappajan anatomia
Camus: The Outsider/Sivullinen
Jean-Pierre Jonquet: The Gold-Diggers/Kullankaivajat
Jean-Patrick Manchette
Jacques Tardi and Leo Malet: 120, Rue de la Gare (and I mean the graphic novel, since the original novel doesn't actually rise much above mediocrity)
Gil Brewer: Little Tramp/Tyttö hurjana
Harry Whittington: The Murder Web/Murhaverkko
James McKimmey: The Squeeze Play
Tedd Thomey: Killer in White/Valkotakkinen tappaja
Day Keene: Murder on the Side/Ansa
H.A. DeRosso: .44.

Best in 2009

The best books I read last year. Some of them really were last year's books, some of them are from 2008 or 2007, some are older. I put the latter ones in a separate list. I'm sure there are books I haven't remembered. I may do another list of films later.

Dave Zeltserman: Pariah
James Ellroy: Blood's a Rover/Levoton veri
Peter Leonard: Quiver/Ihmismetsällä
Megan Abbott: Die a Little
Gabriel Hunt, as told to Charles Ardai: Hunt through the Cradle of Fear
Allan Guthrie: Savage Night
Jason Starr: The Follower; Panic Attack (I think I liked Panic Attack more, even though The Follower really has its moments)
Jonathan Maberry: Patient Zero (with some reservations)
Anthony Neil Smith: Yellow Medicine; Psychosomatic
Petri Salin: Toinen nainen/The Other Woman

Books that have come out earlier, but I just read them last year or there was a Finnish translation:

Elmore Leonard: Valdez Is Coming (Finnish translation in 2009 as Valdez)
Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man (Finnish translation in 2009 as Katso ihmistä)
Ross Macdonald: Meet Me at the Morgue, under the UK title Experience With Evil
Ken Bruen: London Boulevard
Jonathan Valin: Day of Wrath
Thomas B. Costain: The Black Rose/Musta ruusu
John Fowles: The Maggot/Ilmestys
Marguerite Yourcenar: The Memoirs of Hadrian/Hadrianuksen muistelmat
Norah Lofts: Madselin/Kohtalokas valloittaja; The Concubine/Kuninkaan jalkavaimo (maybe a bit of an exaggeration to call these one of the best books I read last year, but for some reason they get stuck to my mind, especially Madselin, romantic, but serious historical novel about the Norman conquest)

Late additions to the best of 2008

Some books I've left unintentionally out from my best of 2008 list or books that appeared in 2008, but which I managed to read only in 2009:

Yasmina Khadra: Attentaatti (in English as The Attack), originally 2006, translated in Finnish in 2008: very gripping tale of a successful Arab doctor living and practicing in Israel: his life goes in turmoil, when his beautiful wife makes a suicide bomb attack in a Jerusalem café

Denis Johnson: Jesus' Son (originally in 1992, translated in Finnish just last year, and I think the book came out only in December): a combination between Raymond Carver and William S. Burroughs, short meaningless stories about drug addicts in the early 1970's America trying to live their lives with no much success, hardboiled style merged with hallucinatory similes, Bukowski without Bukowski's machismo

Paul Gravett (ed.): The Mammoth Book of the Best Crime Comics: huge package of mostly hardboiled and noir comics from the 1930's on to this day, from Dashiell Hammett's and Alex Raymond's X-9 to Alex Toth's and Bernie Krigstein's stylish noir and to Neil Gaiman's and Oscar Zarate's very, very chilling story about one of the wealthiest man in the world and his liking for beautiful boys, but all in all, lots and lots of great stuff, the book you don't want to be without (should probably write a longer piece on this, but I don't think I'll manage, since I've been sick and am behind my work and still don't feel like starting today) - but let me add since this stuff'll interest many people reading this blog: included are also Mickey Spillane's one and only Mike Lancer story and a long newspaper story featuring Mike Hammer (which wasn't bad, interesting that Hammer was drawn to look exactly like Mickey Spillane himself)

My favourite capers

Peter Rozovsky asked his readers their favourite caper novels and films. My list:

In books: Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman, something by Lionel White, something by that Stark guy (sorry, can't pick up a specific title). By White, probably Clean Break, but mainly because it was made into The Killing by Stanley Kubrick. But anything by Lionel White is great, especially The Big Caper.

Still books: Al Conroy's Devil in Dungarees. Brian Garfield's Relentless. Zekial Marko's Scratch a Thief. The first two Earl Drakes by Dan Marlowe and also Four For the Money by the said writer.

In films: Jean-Pierre Melville The Red Circle (Le cercle rouge or some such in French). Melville must have some other films I'm overlooking, but that has had the best-staying effect. Reservoir Dogs. Still Tarantino's best and still one of the best crime films ever made. The Killing, if it only were not for the voice-over narration! The Asphalt Jungle. The caper scenes in Gun Crazy, which are just superb, superb, superb.

A Fish Called Wanda has a good caper scene in the beginning, too, so we shouldn't forget the Ealing film I Stole a Million. Nor The Ladykillers!

The best in 2008

Everyone has been posting their lists of 2008, so here's another one, maybe a bit eclectic and not everything on it is new or even from this century, but... you know me. In no particular order:

Reed Farrel Coleman: Soul Patch
Dave Zeltserman: Small Crimes
Peter Ackroyd: his new biography on Edgar Allan Poe (is it only called Poe?)
Megan Abbott: Queenpin
Duane Swierczynski: The Blonde
Jimmy Sangster: Foreign Exchange
Christa Faust: Money Shot
Mika Waltari as Kristian Korppi: Kuolleen silmät/The Dead Man's Eyes (the collection of Waltari's early horror stories)
Jorma Napola: Ruuvikierre (one of the first Finnish private eye novels from 1962)
Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy (I think I promised somewhere that I'd write more about this entry in the Lew Archer series which I recently reread, but it seems I never got around to doing it; it's great, even though not one of the best Archers)
Jonathan Littell: The Kindly Ones (out in Finnish as Hyväntahtoiset): the book that pretty much kept me from posting anything original on this blog: a 900-page novel about a Nazi officer, horrendous, but very well written and immaculately thought out; I wrote a review on it, it's here (in Finnish)

I'm sure there are others. These - except Macdonald and Littell - I have mentioned on this blog, but it seems I don't write about every novel or short story I read. (And on Ackroyd and Faust I only offered a slight piece not worth linking to.)