Books to Die For
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors would like to thank all those writers, publishers, editors, agents, and assistants who helped to bring this anthology together. Your time, patience, knowledge, and generosity are very much appreciated. Special thanks, too, to Ellen Clair Lamb, for whom the title “editorial assistant” doesn’t seem quite sufficient, given that she collated, translated, advised, edited, and copyedited for this volume. Thanks, too, to Jennie Ridyard, who fact-checked and saved some of our blushes. Any errors that remain do so despite all of our best efforts, and we apologize for them.
We are grateful to David Brown and Caroline Porter at Simon & Schuster, Kerry Hood at Hodder & Stoughton, and Clare Wallace at the Darley Anderson Literary Agency, all of whom helped us to reach out to those authors whom we didn’t personally know. Similar aid came from Delia Louzán at Tusquets in Spain; Sophie Thiébaut at Place des éditeurs in France; Anne Michel and Solène Chabanais at Albin Michel; Misa Morikawa at the Tuttle-Mori Agency in Japan; Antonio Lozano in Spain; and Stefano Bortolussi in Italy.
Finally, thanks to Sue Fletcher, Swati Gamble, and all at Hodder & Stoughton; Emily Bestler, Judith Curr, and all at Atria Books; and Darley Anderson and his staff at the Darley Anderson Literary Agency who, in these straitened times for books and publishing, agreed to support this labor of love.
CREDITS
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes © Megan Abbott, 2012
Act of Passion by Georges Simenon © John Banville, 2012
The Goodbye Look by Ross Macdonald © Linwood Barclay, 2012
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle © Linda Barnes, 2012
Early Autumn by Robert B. Parker © Colin Bateman, 2012
The Light of Day by Eric Ambler © M.C. Beaton, 2012.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett © Mark Billingham, 2012
120, Rue de la Gare by Léo Malet © Cara Black, 2012
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams © Christopher Brookmyre, 2012
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens © Rita Mae Brown, 2012
Daddy Cool by Donald Goines © Ken Bruen, 2012
The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt © Elisabetta Bucciarelli, 2012
The Assassin by Liam O’Flaherty © Declan Burke, 2012
The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos © Declan Burke, 2012
The Outlander by Gil Adamson © Caroline Carver, 2012
Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers © Rebecca Chance, 2012
Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter © Paul Charles, 2012
The Damned and the Destroyed by Kenneth Orvis © Lee Child, 2012
Different Seasons by Stephen King © Paul Cleave, 2012
The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell © Ann Cleeves, 2012
Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell © Reed Farrel Coleman, 2012
The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips © Eoin Colfer, 2012
I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane © Max Allan Collins, 2012
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler © Michael Connelly, 2012
The Chill by Ross Macdonald © John Connolly, 2012
The Black Echo by Michael Connelly © John Connolly, 2012
A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne © Thomas H. Cook, 2012
Toxic Shock (Blood Shot) by Sara Paretsky © Natasha Cooper, 2012
The Wrong Case by James Crumley © David Corbett, 2012
A Night for Screaming by Harry Whittington © Bill Crider, 2012
Cover Her Face by P. D. James © Deborah Crombie, 2012
The Executioners by John D. MacDonald © Jeffery Deaver, 2012
The Holy Terror by Leslie Charteris © David Downing, 2012
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin © Ruth Dudley Edwards, 2012
Prótesis by Andreu Martín © Cristina Fallarás, 2012
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain © Joseph Finder, 2012
Tell No One by Harlan Coben © Sebastian Fitzek, 2012
Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell © Kathryn Fox, 2012
The Secret History by Donna Tartt © Tana French, 2012
A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton © Meg Gardiner, 2012
A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block © Alison Gaylin, 2012
Gun Before Butter by Nicolas Freeling © Jason Goodwin, 2012
The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis © Sara Gran, 2012
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith © Jean-Christophe Grangé, 2012
The Bastard by Erskine Caldwell © Allan Guthrie, 2012
LaBrava by Elmore Leonard © James W. Hall, 2012
Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn © Denise Hamilton, 2012
Murder . . . Now and Then by Jill McGown © Sophie Hannah Jones, 2012
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household © Charlaine Harris Schulz, 2012
Possession by A. S. Byatt © Erin Hart, 2012
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple © John Harvey, 2012
Clockers by Richard Price © Gar Anthony Haywood, 2012
Endless Night by Agatha Christie © Lauren Milne Henderson, 2012
Fast One by Paul Cain © Chuck Hogan, 2012
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke © Katherine Howell, 2012
A Stranger in My Grave by Margaret Millar © Declan Hughes, 2012
Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout © Arlene Hunt, 2012
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene © Peter James, 2012
A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr © Paul Johnston, 2012
Skin Deep by Peter Dickinson © Laurie R. King, 2012
A Simple Plan by Scott Smith © Michael Koryta, 2012
Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman © William Kent Krueger, 2012
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler © Joe R. Lansdale, 2012
The Animal Factory by Edward Bunker © Jens Lapidus, 2012
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley © Dennis Lehane, 2012
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins © Elmore Leonard, 2012
Out by Natsuo Kirino © Diane Wei Liang, 2012
Love’s Lovely Counterfeit by James M. Cain © Laura Lippman, 2012
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman © Bill Loehfelm, 2012
The Ax by Donald E. Westlake © Lisa Lutz, 2012
A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson © Shane Maloney, 2012
The Ghost of Blackwood Hall by Carolyn Keene © Liza Marklund, 2012
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey © Margaret Maron, 2012
The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe © J. Wallis Martin, 2012
On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill © Val McDermid, 2012
The Main by Trevanian © John McFetridge, 2012
Black and Blue by Ian Rankin © Brian McGilloway, 2012
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith © Adrian McKinty, 2012
Nineteen Seventy-Four by David Peace © Eoin McNamee, 2012
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré © Élmer Mendoza, 2012
Ten Plus One by Ed McBain © Deon Meyer, 2012
Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky © Dreda Say Mitchell, 2012
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane © Chris Mooney, 2012
The Big Heat by William P. McGivern © Eddie Muller, 2012
Fadeout by Joseph Hansen © Marcia Muller, 2012
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (aka The Trial of Elizabeth Cree) by Peter Ackroyd © Barbara Nadel, 2012
The Alienist by Caleb Carr © Reggie Nadelson, 2012
Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson © Jo Nesbø, 2012
American Tabloid by James Ellroy © Stuart Neville, 2012
The Steam Pig by James McClure © Mike Nicol, 2012
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle © Carol O’Connell, 2012
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee © Margie Orford, 2012
Southern Seas (Los mares del sur) by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán © Leonardo Padura, 2012
Bleak House by Charles Dickens © Sara Paretsky, 2012
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett © Davi
d Peace, 2012
Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg © George Pelecanos, 2012
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey © Louise Penny, 2012
The Perk by Mark Gimenez © Anne Perry, 2012
The Scene by Clarence Cooper Jr. © Gary Phillips, 2012
The Woman Chaser by Charles Willeford © Scott Phillips, 2012
Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze © Bill Pronzini, 2012
Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö © Qiu Xiaolong, 2012
I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond © Ian Rankin, 2012
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris © Kathy Reichs, 2012
The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham © Phil Rickman, 2012
A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell © Peter Robinson, 2012
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (aka Smilla’s Sense of Snow) by Peter Høeg © Michael Robotham, 2012
Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart © M. J. Rose, 2012
True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne © S. J. Rozan, 2012
3 to Kill (Le petit bleu de la côte ouest) by Jean-Patrick Manchette © James Sallis, 2012
Murder in the Marais by Cara Black © Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, 2012
The Dead Letter by Metta Fuller Victor © Karin Slaughter, 2012
Escape by Perihan Mağden © Mehmet Murat Somer, 2012
Bootlegger’s Daughter by Margaret Maron © Julia Spencer-Fleming, 2012
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie © Kelli Stanley, 2012
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins © Andrew Taylor, 2012
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley © Martyn Waites, 2012
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier © Minette Walters, 2012
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote © Joseph Wambaugh, 2012
The Hunter by Richard Stark © F. Paul Wilson, 2012
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton © Laura Wilson, 2012
JOHN CONNOLLY is the author of such international bestsellers as The Whisperers, The Gates, The Lovers, The Reapers, The Unquiet, The Black Angel, Every Dead Thing, Dark Hollow, The Killing Kind, The Book of Lost Things, and Bad Men. He is also the host of the weekly radio show ABC to XTC. He divides his time between Dublin, Ireland, and Portland, Maine. He can be contacted through his website at www.johnconnollybooks.com or via Twitter @jconnollybooks.
DECLAN BURKE is the author of Eightball Boogie, The Big O, and Absolute Zero Cool. He is also the editor of Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century. He lives in Wicklow, Ireland, with his wife, Aileen, and baby daughter, Lily, and hosts a website, called Crime Always Pays, dedicated to Irish crime fiction. Visit his website at crimealwayspays.blogspot.com or contact him on Twitter @declanburke.
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JACKET DESIGN BY TONY MAURO
AUTHOR PHOTO: JOHN CONNOLLY © IVÁN GIMÉNEZ COSTA, DECLAN BURKE BY KATHY BURKE
COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
ALSO BY JOHN CONNOLLY
THE CHARLIE PARKER STORIES
Every Dead Thing
Dark Hollow
The Killing Kind
The White Road
The Reflecting Eye (Novella in the Nocturnes Collection)
The Black Angel
The Unquiet
The Reapers
The Lovers
The Whisperers
The Burning Soul
The Wrath of Angels
OTHER WORKS
Bad Men
The Book of Lost Things
SHORT STORIES
Nocturnes
THE SAMUEL JOHNSON STORIES (FOR YOUNG ADULTS)
The Gates
The Infernals
ALSO BY DECLAN BURKE
NOVELS
Eightball Boogie
The Big O
Absolute Zero Cool
Slaughter’s Hound
NONFICTION
Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century
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1 Judith Flanders, The Invention of Murder (New York: HarperPress, 2011), p. 178.
2 Ibid., pp. 158 ff.
3 “Homely” in this passage means “home-grown.”
4 The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) is the first work to follow the character’s premature death, though it precedes the comeback story of Holmes’s resurrection, “The Adventure of the Empty House,” in 1903. So presumably we’re meant to believe that events in the 1902 novel took place before Holmes’s demise in “The Final Problem,” a short story of 1893. Do not reread this. Just . . . let it go.
5 The Baskerville family’s home, Clyro Court, has since been repurposed and renamed the Baskerville Hall Hotel. In a contest of sorts over bragging rights for the story’s true setting, it wins for the architectural and landscaping similarities to the estate in the novel, though it is not, as Doyle describes it, a fourteenth-century castle. This gray-stone manor house was built in 1839.
6 Bertram Fletcher Robinson takes credit for inspiring the novel by relating a hound-of-hell legend to the author—though British folklore was already crawling with phantom devil dogs. Doyle does acknowledge his friend in the clothbound edition of 1902, but Robinson’s own story of this contribution, made on a golfing holiday in March 1901, leaves little time before serialization in the August edition of The Strand Magazine that same year. Given the cliffhanger style of this serial format, the novel was well plotted and paced before the first of eight installments, and not written on the fly (though serials do offer time for rewrites). Prolific Doyle dashed off many a short story in this same span, though novels are more widely spaced in the Holmes canon, suggesting they might’ve been a year or more in the making, but the author wrote his magnum opus in less than six months.
7 The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, was sparked by the arrest of a black woman, Rosa Parks, for refusing to surrender her seat on a bus to a white passenger. It eventually led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared unconstitutional the Alabama laws requiring segregated buses.
8 High Priest wasn’t the first novel he wrote. That was Deliver Me from Dallas, written in collaboration with a writer by the name of W. Franklin Sanders. Sanders had the book published in 1961 in altered form under the title Whip Hand without Willeford’s knowledge or sanction and, most damningly, without his name on the cover. Dennis McMillan published the original version in 2001, and what’s most remarkable about it is what it lacks: the assured, sardonic, insouciance of Willeford’s voice, which debuts fully formed and full of confident swagger in High Priest.
9 Watching a video of the uncut, black-and-white version supplied by a friend close to the production, I turned to my wife at this particular juncture and said, “He’s lost you, hasn’t he?” “No,” she said with some vehemence. “I’m with him.” Such is the power of the Willefordian protagonist.
10 The term “Bantu” as a description of Bantu-speaking South Africans became discredited in the middle of the twentieth century when South Africa’s ruling National Party, which was responsible for the introduction of apartheid, began using the term as a racial categorization.
11 Translated, variously, as Children’s Death Songs or Songs on the Death of Children.
12 Six men, all of whom were born in Northern Ireland but lived in Birmingham, sentenced to life imprisonment for bomb offenses in the U.K. in 1975, and released after sixteen years when their convictions w
ere declared unsound.
INDEX OF CONTRIBUTING AND SUBJECT AUTHORS
Abbott, Megan 112
Ackroyd, Peter 421
Adams, Douglas 352
Adamson, Gil 506
Allingham, Margery 140
Ambler, Eric 188
Banville, John 116
Barclay, Linwood 239
Barnes, Linda 27
Bateman, Colin 324
Beaton, M. C. (Marion Chesney) 188
Berne, Suzanne 443
Billingham, Mark 46
Black, Cara 105, 463
Block, Lawrence 378
Brookmyre, Christopher 352
Brown, Rita Mae 15
Bruen, Ken 264
Bucciarelli, Elisabetta 167
Bunker, Edward 297
Burke, Declan 28, 438
Burke, James Lee 510
Byatt, A. S. (Antonia Susan) 366
Cain, James M. 70, 103
Cain, Paul (George Carol Sims) 67
Caldwell, Erskine 42
Capote, Truman 224
Carr, Caleb 425
Carver, C. J. (Caroline) 506
Chance, Rebecca 56
Chandler, Raymond 94, 129
Charles, Paul 274
Charteris, Leslie (Leslie Bowyer-Yin) 62
Chaze, Elliott 144
Child, Lee 194
Christie, Agatha 74, 229
Cleave, Paul 336
Cleeves, Ann 430
Coben, Harlan 490
Coetzee, J. M. (John Maxwell) 473
Coleman, Reed Farrel 469
Colfer, Eoin 486
Collins, Max Allan 119
Collins, Wilkie 23
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 27, 32
Connelly, Michael 129, 382
Connolly, John 212, 382
Cook, Thomas H. 443
Cooper, Clarence, Jr. 171
Cooper, N. J. (Natasha) 362
Corbett, David 268
Cornwell, Patricia 370
Crider, Bill 179
Crispin, Edmund 108
Crombie, Deborah 190
Crumley, James 268, 309
Deaver, Jeffery 158