The First Crime Novel You Read?

[bree]

Mine was Christie's At Bertram's Hotel, when I was 10.

I didn't understand what was happening though!

[SiameseCat]

Arthur Conan Doyle and his creation Sherlock Holmes.

 

It was a quiet and boring grey afternoon. I was scanning through my M & D's bookshelves and came upon a collection of crime stories, two of which were SH. I fell big time into the genre and have been hooked ever since. I was around eleven years old.

Same here. I was in my teens. Incidentally it was also The Speckled Band, same as another post. The Hound of the Baskervilles was next. It's so well-written I can still read it again and feel the same suspense, despite knowing most of it by heart.

 

Sadly there is no-one out there that comes even close now. (It seems no-one understands the huge difference between skillfully created suspense and graphic gore. ) Years later I stumbled across Tony Hillerman. He had a similarly minimal and atmospheric style on top of superb stories. He also died a few years ago. But then, he too is so good you can read his stuff time and again.

 

Along the way I followed recommendations for PD James and Cornwell but was disappointed in both. I found James extremely wordy despite half-decent stories, so much so all the suspense got lost. Condensed to a quarter of the volume they might work. After persisting through 10 books Cornwell books, my initial diagnosis still stands - gore instead of content, packaged in a tone that takes itself far too seriously.