Today is my birthday. Don’t ask which one. If anybody out there wants a birthday, you can have one of mine. I have a lot more than I need.

My friend Hunter Baker, of North Greenville University, has given tongue to the voice of multitudes, thus: “When, oh when,” those multitudes ask, “will Lars Walker offer a Top Ten list of his favorite mystery novels?”

To which I reply, “Why would anybody care what my favorite mystery novels are?”

Nevertheless, the challenge has been delivered, and I shall endeavor to give satisfaction.

First, some clarifications.

This list is not, and does not purport to be, an actual list of Best Books. There are whole swathes (I’ve grown uncertain how to pronounce that word: I’ve always rhymed it with “moths,” but other people rhyme it was “lathes.” Most troubling) of the mystery genre which I’ve rarely or never tried. Especially in the Cozy vein. Many passionate (sometimes frightening) people are devoted to Cozies; I haven’t got the nerve to laugh at them. I’ll just note that Cozy is not my cuppa arsenic-laced tea and, having writ, move on.

Agatha Christie remains, I believe, the most popular mystery writer in the world. I’ve read some Christie, but was not won over. Her focus is on the puzzle, not on the characters. Her readers delight in following clues and trying to figure out whodunnit before the Big Reveal at the end.

Me, I gave up solving mysteries long ago. On the rare occasions when I’m able to outthink the sleuth in a story, it’s usually because the author tipped his/her hand through trying to misdirect me in some way, and I caught him/her at it. I’m a better storyteller than a detective.

I read mysteries mostly to live vicariously through the characters and to observe them acting in extreme situations. I am not a man of action; I’ve managed to cram, I’d estimate, ten or twelve years of living into my three-score and several years of life.

With all this understood, here’s my Top Ten list. Purely personal, biased and subjective. Delivered with no authority whatever.

1. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I can’t conceive of any such list leaving this book off. Doyle wrote it during that hiatus in his career after he’d “killed off” Sherlock Holmes and before he brought him back, lest his faithful readers stone him in the street. He succeeded in combining the Gothic genre with the detective story, and succeeded in a style that still thrills. And, just to taunt his fans, he kept Holmes himself out of a large chunk of the book entirely, focusing on the more sympathetic Doctor Watson.
2. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. This was a hard choice. The Nine Tailors may actually be the best novel in the Lord Peter Wimsey series; I only left it out because it takes the hero too far afield. I like Lord Peter at home in his London clubman’s world. Lord Peter is one of the great detective characters. His frivolous façade conceals post-traumatic stress and the heart of a serious moralist, excluding his author’s religious faith.
3. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiel Hammet. In some ways, the John Ford movie starring Humphrey Bogart is better than the book. Hammet’s detective on the page is smoother and more cold-blooded than Bogart’s character; almost a sociopath. The book is grittier, with strong (negative) undercurrents of homosexuality. Sam Spade’s final speech to Brigid O’Shaugnessy is colder, harder, not as melancholy as Bogart’s delivery. The author was a Communist – he sent the woman to her death for the good of the Collective.
4. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. I recommend reading Andrew Klavan’s autobiographical book, The Great Good Thing for his thoughts about this novel. Chandler was not only a better prose stylist than Hammet, he was also a more generous soul. Philip Marlowe is unmistakably, as Chandler himself admitted, a modern knight errant. But the dragons he fights are not only criminals but harsh truths; exact truth gets sacrificed to mercy.
5. Pale Gray For Guilt, by John D. MacDonald. It’s very hard for me to pick a favorite from MacDonald’s long-running and generally outstanding, color-coded Travis McGee series, about a “salvage expert” who lives on a houseboat in Florida and recovers stolen goods in return for half their value. Author MacDonald had a degree in Business, and one of this book’s strengths is the way he makes a business story exciting. It also gives a lot of space to McGee’s economist friend Meyer, a truly great sympathetic side character. This book is particularly notable for allowing us to see our heroes looking into the Nietzschean Abyss as they seek to con a con man.
6. The Godwulf Manuscript, by Robert B. Parker. This is a case where I’m dealing with a series I liked a lot, but haven’t read for a while. So I’m just selecting the first book in the sequence. I liked Spenser very much in the early stages, but as the series wore on, I grew weary of his increasingly doctrinaire feminism. One of the great tough guy characters, Spenser got reduced to beta status in his obsequious subjection to Sarah Silverman, and I just lost interest. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the early Spenser books were amazing, and flawlessly composed.
7. The Trapdoor, by Andrew Klavan. Andrew Klavan will get extra love in this list, partly because he’s my hero, and partly because I was a fan before I’d ever heard of him. He wrote his John Wells series, about a self-destructive, alcoholic reporter with a passion for justice, under the pseudonym of Keith Peterson. I discovered this series when it was new, and immediately bonded with it. At the time I was just gestating my own literary tastes, and I recognized in this Peterson guy the kind of author I craved – one with a powerful moral urge underlying fine craftsmanship, but without preaching. Peterson disappeared after a while, and I used to wonder what had happened to him – until I learned that he was in fact Andrew Klavan in false whiskers.
8. When the Bough Breaks, by Jonathan Kellerman. This is, again, the first book in a series. The Alex Delaware books defy picking and choosing, because they’re all very much the same – and that’s not a criticism. Kellerman is a craftsman, and his product is utterly reliable. The series parted company with reality long ago – no real psychiatrist would be allowed to consult on murders as routinely as Alex Delaware does, and both he and his gay cop friend Milo Sturgis have ceased to age like mere mortals. As humans, we long for a world of consistency and permanence, and the Alex Delaware books foster such an illusion. With lots of entertainment thrown in.
9. Dynamite Road, by Andrew Klavan. I’m afraid I have to reserve these last spots for Klavan, because he’s just that good. Dynamite Road is the first in a trilogy about a detective agency run by guys named Scott Weiss and Jim Bishop, who resemble Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin but are nothing like them. Ongoing plot threads involve the unnamed narrator falling in love and coming of age, and Scott Weiss’s obsession with a beautiful prostitute who’s being stalked by the most dangerous killer in the world. I called this series a detective epic in a post at the American Spectator Online, and I stand by that judgment.
10. When Christmas Comes, by Andrew Klavan. Klavan does not excel as selector of book titles. This novel is not a Yuletide cozy, though it does take place around Christmas; it’s the first installment in yet another detective epic (but a longer, ongoing one). Cameron Winter, the hero, is a former secret government assassin, now living discreetly as an English teacher at a small college. Occasionally, guided by a peculiar instinct he possesses, he is impelled to investigate some notorious crime that’s in the news. At the same time, he’s trying to work through his feelings of guilt by telling his life’s story to his psychologist. And now he’s falling in love. A new Cameron Winter book every December is a major event in my year.

There it is. You may show your gratitude for this post by reviewing one (or more) of my novels at amazon.com.