Tue 8 Mar 2011
As posted today on Elizabeth Foxwell’s The Bunburyist blog:
The Top Ten favorite mystery writers of 1941, as reported by the New York Times on April 18, 1941, based on a survey conducted by Columbia University:
1. Dorothy L. Sayers
2. Agatha Christie
3. Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Ngaio Marsh
5. Erle Stanley Gardner
6. Rex Stout
7. Ellery Queen
8. Margery Allingham
9. Dashiell Hammett
10. Georges Simenon
2. Agatha Christie
3. Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Ngaio Marsh
5. Erle Stanley Gardner
6. Rex Stout
7. Ellery Queen
8. Margery Allingham
9. Dashiell Hammett
10. Georges Simenon
Follow the link above for more information, including who was considered “Best Detective.”
Any surprises? Based on recent discussion on this blog, any comments?
March 8th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
No Raymond Chandler?
March 8th, 2011 at 9:45 pm
Stan
My first thought as well, but…
…other than stories in the pulp magazines, in 1941 Chandler had had only two novels published:
The Big Sleep (1939)
Farewell, My Lovely (1940)
The High Window came along in 1942 and The Lady in the Lake in 1943.
March 8th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
I would have love to read the Top Ten Favorites list the New York POST might have published, with the survey conducted by the local bar.
March 8th, 2011 at 9:54 pm
The results could very well surprise us! It wouldn’t look much like this one, that’s for sure.
March 8th, 2011 at 9:56 pm
By the way, congratulations to Stan. His comment #1 showed up in less than two minutes from the post itself — an all-time record!
March 8th, 2011 at 10:44 pm
No argument with the names, maybe the positions.
NEW YORK POST readers read books? Anyway in 41 the big competition was the HERALD TRIBUNE.
What strikes me as ironic though is I wonder if today they would come up with ten writers that good — or that well known by the general public.
I suspect the top ten today would be nowhere near as universally admired as that list — though to be honest if the list was compiled by anyone halfway literate it would probably be these same ten writers.
I can only think of maybe four writers since then other than Chandler who really would belong on a top ten list, and the bad thing is all but one of them are dead, and Raymond Chandler is the only one whose position would be a dead cinch.
Also notable that one of the ten was dead (Doyle) and two no longer writing (Sayers and Hammett). Hammett had a strong presence in film and on radio, but it’s a tribute to Sayers popularity and that of her books that she is still on the list (okay, HAUNTED HONEYMOON came out in ’40, but it certainly wasn’t popular)with only her reputation keeping her name familiar to readers.
But that brings up a question, are there ten writers in the genre today who will be that familiar to readers in sixty years?
Just sitting here I’m having a problem coming up with two or three. Okay, I’m having trouble coming up with one.
And the bad thing is I’m not sure in sixty years these same ten won’t be the main contenders for any ten best list.
March 8th, 2011 at 11:41 pm
The survey was conducted among the readership of Columbia University Press weekly newsletter The Pleasures of Publishing. In other words a more sophisticated group than the norm!
That’s indicated by the presence of Simenon, who was just starting to catch on in the Anglo world in translation.
We see the British Crime Queen ascendancy cementing among the vanguard. 1941 was very different from 1931.
We see Dashiell Hammett enjoyed a following among the highbrows (Chandler was soon to join in).
And we see that Gardner, Stout and Queen deserved greater (or even some, in two cases) mention in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction!
No Rinehart, no Eberhart, no Ford–but these were writers who owed their popularity to a different demographic from Columbia University Press devotees.
March 8th, 2011 at 11:50 pm
David, among British writers, anyway, James and Rendell really dominated the post-Golden Age Crime Queens age (say, post 1976) for twenty years or so. I think now Rankin and McDermid have replaced them?
I still like Peter Lovesey and Robert Barnard a lot, but Barnard seems to have faded in position, though he’s still prolific. I would hope Lovesey would survive, though, some of his stuff is quite good and very classical.
March 9th, 2011 at 12:20 am
If we were to go by the Bestseller lists, we’d know who’d be on a similar list today: authors like Dan Brown, James Patterson, Lee Child, Robert B. Parker and Sandra Brown.
In 1941 “mystery writer” meant detective stories. In 2011, to the general public, it means “thriller writer.”
But maybe Columbia University pollees would generate different results from the general public, now perhaps as well as then?
March 9th, 2011 at 12:21 am
I see only three that have any chance of making any “favorites” list today: Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett.
By the way there is a poll running at Jensbookthoughts to vote for your favorite amateur detective. Voting ends March 12th. The pairings are a bit odd. Poke Rafferty vs Jane Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey vs Lady Emily Hargreaves, The Hardy Boys vs Odelia Grey, etc.
http://www.jensbookthoughts.com/2010/03/let-voting-begin.html
It is not the New York TIMES, but it will be fun to see who some of today’s mysteries fans consider their favorite amateur detective.
March 9th, 2011 at 12:33 am
By the way, I would imagine that one of the people polled almost certainly was Jacques Barzun (now, there would have been one vote for John Street!).
March 9th, 2011 at 4:48 am
Reportedly, the original hardback publication of Chandler’s first four novels starting in 1939 only had modest sales.
Their re-publication in paperback in 1943 made them best sellers. Chandler became famous, his books were made into movies, etc.
March 9th, 2011 at 10:33 am
I looked at that list of bloggers’ favorite amateur sleuths and I recognized less than half the authors & characters. It’s amazing how much crime fiction continues to be published and that so much of it is read. A good thing, I’d say. But I still prefer the oldies.
I don’t quite understand the pairings in that contest. Some seem paired purposely to eliminate characters from the Golden Age. Lisabeth Salander vs Father Brown? Ridiculously unfair. The poor priest, he’ll be slammed and lose in a landslide. But he’s far smarter than her and he never used a computer.
March 9th, 2011 at 11:50 am
Of modern writers — say those from post WW II on, I came up with plenty who are popular, but what I struggled with are those who will be remembered say sixty years from now as well as these ten are today. I’m not sure about Allingham, but the other nine are all in print (or have been in the last decade) Perhaps not as ubiquitous as they once were in Gardner’s case, but far from difficult to find.
Rendell and James are strong likelihoods, Dick Francis maybe, hopefully Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald, Mickey Spillane, John Le Carre. Ian Fleming — but none of them new names — and mostly thriller writers. If you limit yourself to detective fiction the list narrows.
I’m not discussing quality. There are plenty of fine writers in terms of quality. I’m discussing those who will still be recognized by the general reading public (I qualify that because the general public likely doesn’t even know who Doyle is among today’s illiterate mob) in sixty years the way Doyle, Christie, Hammett, etc are.
Sixty years from now I suspect Christie, Doyle, Hammett, Stout, Simenon, and Chandler will still be highly regarded, but I’m willing to bet no one will remember Brown, or Patterson, or any of the big best selling names of today’s writers. I’m not sure even some deserving names will hold on.
And if you limit yourself to anything that could reasonably be called a detective story instead of a thriller, is there anyone who is writing today whose work will be remembered in sixty years?
I’m not talking popularity so much as longevity — less sales than rank.
It may well be that in that sense the detective story proper is dead and not coming back — at least in terms of recognition and popularity.
And re this original list, even though Columbia might have wedged Simenon in there at the bottom all the other writers were well known and loved by the general public — and I suspect would have dominated any list compiled of general readers at the time.
That said, we all know that the books people name when they are compiling one of these lists aren’t always their favorites so much as the books they want everyone to think are their favorites. There is a tendency to list someone respectable when you were really reading someone popular.
A bit like saying CRIME AND PUNISHMENT is your favorite novel when you read it once in college but have reread PEYTON PLACE ten times.
I’m not talking a contemporary popularity contest, but a list of ten contemporary writers likely to have the kind of recognition sixty years from now that these ten had in 1941 and still have today.
Not how much we like someone now and how good we think they are, but whether in sixty years there is a chance they will have the kind of recognition those ten names do.
And don’t confuse popularity today with longevity. None of the ten writers on the list above sold half as many books as Kathleen Winsor’s FOREVER AMBER, but Winsor is pretty obscure today (AMBER was in print recently though). Brown or Larsson may be remembered as phenomena in sixty years, but I don’t think anyone will be reading them much. I’m willing to bet neither of them will be in print.
John
Don’t feel too sorry for Father Brown. Sixty years from now he’ll still be in print, when no one remembers who Lisbeth Salander is as good as Larsson was.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
David, if the e-book world has its way even hacks such as James Patterson will still be in print.
The last published book of Ellery Queen I can find is “The Tragedy of Errors & Others” by Crippen & Landru in 1999. I can not find anything else in print (but I did not look very hard). But then I believe, Ellery Queen was more important to the genre as an editor than a writer.
The mystery genre has changed since 1941. The difference between classic mystery and modern mystery is the story’s focus.
Classic mystery is usually about who done it or about solving a puzzle or answering a question. Characters often exist as one dimensional plot devices. Modern mystery is usually about the characters and the mystery is often one dimensional plot device. Classic mystery will never die but it is all ready fading in popularity.
I avoid best sellers as over time I have discovered my taste runs to writers that are most likely out of print. So my favorites are rarely mass approved.
My favorites in pre-1941 authors include Norbert Davis, Craig Rice, Maurice Leblanc, and maybe Harlan Page Halsey (I have read only one of his books). From the top 10 list in question I have read them all and enjoyed only Dashiell Hammett, Rex Stout, and Erle Stanley Gardner.
My favorites in the post-1941 authors include Jasper Fforde, Vince Kohler, Carol O’Connell, and Ross H. Spencer. As well as some that the average reader might have heard of such as Robert B. Parker, Gregory Mcdonald, Elmore Leonard, and Donald Westlake.
And with the exception of Hammett, I would rather read a thriller from Ross Thomas or Thomas Perry than any book by the other nine on the 1941 list.
As for your comment that sixty years Father Brown will be more remembered than Lisbeth Salander, I could not disagree more. Today few average readers had read a Father Brown story, in sixty years there will be fewer left to remember him.
One of the keys to the long term popularity of a writer lies in film and TV. Erle Stanley Gardner is little read, but who has not seen a PERRY MASON TV episode or TV-movie? In sixty years, the Larsson’s characters will still exist in critically acclaimed and mass audience approved movies. And Father Brown will be nearly forgotten.
March 9th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Michael
I think you are likely wrong about Salander and Larsson for a lot of reasons, and the chief one is she is very much a character and creation of the current times. I love the Larsson books and the films, but I can think of dozens of phenomena like Salander and Larsson no one remembers today. Anyone remember Alison from PEYTON PLACE, JR from DALLAS, Kookie from 77 SUNSET STRIP or any of a few hundred other such creations other than as trivia?
On the other hand Chesterton and Father Brown have already stood the test of time without the aid of much in the way of movies or television and will continue to do so.
I do think Harry Potter may stand the test of time if only because sixty years from now many of the kids who read his adventures will still be around. But I suspect Larsson and Salander will fade like most popular creations. And frankly I don’t have very high hopes for the American version of the films.
Salander may fool me (and I like her and the books enough to hope she does) but I doubt it. Just the fact that Larsson isn’t around to keep producing new books is a tremendous block to her longevity.
As for being in print and available online it’s not quite the same thing. Books can be kept available online for nothing — books in print (other than on demand) require an investment. Chesterton and Father Brown will still be in print in sixty years, but I’m willing to bet Larsson will be largely a footnote in twenty.
And I’m not discussing literary quality or even contemporary popularity. Most of the most popular writers of 1941 would probably be unknown to most of us, or only vaguely remembered.
Take a period as recent as the fifties. Other than Mickey Spillane how many people read Irving Wallace, James Gould Cozzens, Hamilton Basso, William Bradford Hughie, Grace Metallious, or Frank Yerby today — but they all sold millions of more books than Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, and on an individual basis Agatha Christie. No individual book by any of the ten on that list even came near PEYTON PLACE sales.
I suspect many readers would enjoy Ross Thomas or Thomas Perry more than the writers on that 1941 list, but Thomas reputation is already fading and his work being forgotten and Thomas Perry is fading even though he is alive and still writing.
I’m not talking popularity, you couldn’t argue with Larsson’s sales. The Salander books have likely sold more books than Chesterton’s entire output over the last century. And they certainly would win hands down any contest today in terms of readers approval.
But sixty years from now Father Brown will still hold his place in the pantheon and Salander and Larsson will be footnotes just like Brown and THE DA VINCI CODE or Tom Clancy and Jack Ryan.
And I’m not talking individual taste or preference either. Your list is pretty close to mine in many cases. But I see nothing about Larsson or Salander to suggest to me they are anything but another briefly popular flash in the pan that will fade to obscurity just as dramatically as they rose to fame.
March 9th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
[…] As a followup the recent post that listed the Top Ten favorite mystery writers in 1941, it has belatedly occurred to me that there was a later similar poll taken, some 30 years […]
March 9th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
Re Salander vs. Father Brown, 60 years from now, I’m going to go with the former. I don’t think the latter is registers very highly as a detective today with anyone under 45 years old, and his recognition factor isn’t going to go any higher.
And yet, with only the three books and Larsson’s untimely death, I’d have to agree that Lisbeth will be coming to the peak of her popularity in no more than two or three years from now. Once the third book comes out in paperback, that will be the beginning of the end.
Unless, and this is a big if, the films made in the US of three books are a huge success. Then I think her staying power will be much much longer.
But as it stands, weighing each in competition with the other, I think Lisbeth will have the edge.
I plan to stick around to find out.
March 9th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t know how popular Salander and Larsson are. I noticed some ad the other day using an image of Noomi Rapace from the films, and when’s the last time you saw a Swedish film referenced in an American ad?
Salander is tremendously popular and deservedly so and no doubt she would beat Father Brown hands down in terms of recognition today.
But Salander is a contemporary creation and she exists only in those terms. She is not timeless and she is not going to age well. Eventually the whole goth thing will be as dated as beatniks or hippies. Any beat or hippie sleuths in the pantheon?
She is a great character, but she does not exist outside of that world. More importantly she does not carry her own world with her. In that sense she is too hip, too contemporary, and too much of the 21rst century.
Fictional creations who last tend to exist in a world that is unique to them and outside of time to some extent. Holmes London, Maigret’s Paris, Marlowe’s LA, the country house milieu of Poirot and Miss Marple, Wolfe and Archie’s New York. You think of them and your mind conjures the world that revolves around them — not the real world — not the contemporary world.
I don’t see that in Salander and I certainly don’t see that with only three books. Even if the American films are a hit (and the Swedish films are a huge cult hit — perhaps the most popular foreign film series since Godzilla) I just don’t see Salander and Larsson having that kind of impact in the long run.
Keep in mind THE MALTESE FALCON was published in the twenties and on its third remake when John Huston made his version. Do you think eleven years from now they will remake Larsson’s book if the American version tanks — or even if it succeeds?
Everyone is being blinded by how much they like the Larsson books and what a great character Salander is, and how good Noomi Rapace is playing her — and I’m not arguing against any of that or denying any of it.
But none of that is a guarantee of historical import or the ability to last over time.
Remember all the hoopla about Patrick O’Brien and Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin a few years ago? Heard much about them lately? I haven’t gotten an update from the Patick O’Brien Society for five years.
They still have their fans, but what everyone was talking about ten years ago is pretty much forgotten now. With only three books Salander will be lucky to last that long. O’Brien wrote for twenty years before fame caught up with him. I know, I fought to find his books all those years.
I just think when passions cool and the dust settles good old Frere Brown will be plodding along like the tortoise while most of us will be trying to remember what the hare’s name was.
March 9th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Movies really do have more of an impact on people than books. I think of all the young people who knew nothing of Tolkien and “had their lives changed” when they saw LORD OF THE RINGS films. Those books were out of print for quite a while before the Jackson trilogy came along.
It’s interesting for me to look back on who was a bestseller when I was teen. Then crime fiction was hardly ever on the bestseller lists and it was only sporadically seen. These days more than half of the titles are crime fiction and crime fiction is REGULARLY on the bestseller lists. And has been since the late 1980s.
But think of these 1970s bestsellers: Taylor Caldwell, Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, Irving Wallace, Sidney Sheldon… Still in print? Still fondly remembered? Still read?
It’s all a crap shot I think. The writers who make money by selling enormous amoutns of books are signs of their time and signs of the marketing of publishers at that time, I think. But these days we have book blogs, amazon.com reviews, and other internet influences to help enhance sales and gain readers. And just as easily to condemn those books deemed unworthy of reading.
March 9th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
John
The LORD OF THE RINGS has never been out of print since Ace Books illegally reprinted them in the sixties. Granted they got a huge rebirth with the films, but why do you think Jackson was able to raise the money to make them in the first place?
J.R.R. Tolkien is still a bestselling writer all these years after his death, and was before the films were ever made. His notes about books he might have written are bestsellers.
That said your point about the impact of films is certainly true — it hasn’t hurt Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, or James Bond. And yet Christie had very little film presence in her lifetime — practially none for Poirot and only the Margaret Rutherford films for Marple. Granted AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION did well, but not enough to account for her popularity. For that matter Sayers was still in print in paperback before the Ian Carmichael series, though the impact of that certainly helped sales.
The PERRY MASON series didn’t make Gardner famous, rich, or a bestseller. Gardner was famous when he produced the Perry Mason series and chose Raymond Burr to play Perry. Granted more people saw the series than read one of the books, but then more people saw HEE HAW weekly than read Hemingway — it’s not a real way to judge importance — but it can sure help sell books.
And what and who sells has always been a crap shoot to some extent. The internet won’t really change that — it’s another tool for publishers, another chance for writers, but still well within the bounds of the game. There is always a Jackie Collins around the corner to knock the wind out of the most successful literary contender.
March 9th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
David, I think you are overrating Father Brown. The character’s view has him dated for much of today’s and future’s society (right or wrong). Chesterton will forever be remembered for THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. But few remember the good Father today.
The point about PERRY MASON is keeping the author and character alive. Every kid growing up watching a PERRY MASON rerun is a possible Gardner new reader. And the reruns are easier to find than the books.
Every new James Bond film reminds people of the books. I never would have read Ian Fleming if Sean Connery’s James Bond had not made such an impression on me.
Longevity often depends on staying on stage. The characters to survive will inspires the public sixty years from now the way Sherlock Holmes is doing to today’s writers. Like I have commented, I see only three from this list doing that, Christie, Doyle, and Hammett. As we have discussed recently, today’s critics are paying less and less attention to Queen and others from that period.
March 9th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
Michael
Some one once wrote that if you had to choose twelve of the best detective short stories ever written and you were totally objective six of them would be by Conan Doyle. By that same standard another four would be by Chesterton.
I thouroughly enjoyed Larsson and the three films based on his books, but by no objective standard are they the best the genre ever produced. They are a highly successful phenomena and deserve every bit of success they have had and Noomi Rapace is brilliant in the films, but at best they will be fondly remembered (at worst endlessly imitated). They are among the best thrillers I’ve seen and read in years, but they are not revolutionary. They are THE DA VINCI CODE, not THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, THE MALTESE FALCON, or THE BIG SLEEP.
With Larsson dead and at best only two more books possible and the success of an American film much less a trilogy questionable the likihood is that we are at the high point of the curve now.
Everyone keeps coming back to popularity as the gauge, and I have repeatedly said I am not talking about popularity but historical significance.
Most of the later Brown stories aren’t all that good — but the first book is one of the most important in the history of the genre. Lisbeth Salander and Steig Larsson do not rise to that level. Popular they might be, but by no standard do they rise to the importance of Chesterton’s THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN.
No argument the Bond films have kept the series alive — but along the way the books have also been reevaluated and have a better literary reputation than they did when they were written — particularly in England — and it was not the films but the Andrew Lycett biography that changed that.
As for Gardner, again no doubt the tv series introduced millions to Perry Mason and still does — but Gardner was one of the best selling writers of the 20th Century before Raymond Burr ever set foot on a sound stage. He may have been elevated to another level by the success of the television series, Perry may have even extended his career in print another decade or so as a result of the television series and certainly without it Perry Mason would not be as well known (if known at all outside the genre), but Gardner would still have been one of the bestselling American mystery writers of the 20th Century even if no series ever developed. The television series may be keeping him alive now, but even without it Gardner’s success would have been unequaled by any mystery writer save Spillane.
You say rightly longevity depends on staying on stage in many cases. I see no evidence that Steig Larsson will be on stage more than a few years whereas Chesteron is dealt with in every text, history, major anthology, and survey of the genre. Just because fans aren’t reading Father Brown at the same rate they clamor for Lisbeth Salander has nothing to do with historical import. They didn’t read Father Brown at the same rate they read Michael Shayne, Nancy Drew, or the Hardy Boys either. For that matter they don’t read Charles Dickens the same as Jackie Collins, but Jackie Collins isn’t going to replace Dickens anytime soon.
If we base it on popularity and sales that’s just the argument we are making.
Best sellers are notoriously short lived in literary terms, and popularity isn’t always the most important factor in deciding what’s important. Chesterton in his day was easily outsold by E. Phillips Oppenheim and William Le Queux. He wasn’t a bestselling writer then anymore than he is now.
Will the others be forgotten — well, I don’t doubt their reputations will slip a bit among fans, and they may not win any popularity contests, but their rank among students of the genre and historians will likely survive popularity contests and revisionist gender politics whether they are in print or not.
In the long run — and I am talking about the long run — the tides of literary fortune will turn. Not that the writers in question will become best sellers or have a great popular revival — but genre historians will clear their heads and turn again to the writers who founded the genre just as they will evaluate and judge those who came along after. Literary fortunes will rise and fall, but in the long run the innovators will retain their import if not their readers.
I never claimed they were as popular as they once were. Or that they ever will be again. I’m saying they are historically important and all the popular polls and revisionist historians in the world won’t change that.
As for the general public, the general public doesn’t know who Steig Larsson or Lisbeth Salander is either. The general public doesn’t read books. The general public doesn’t know who fought in World War II or that New Mexico is a state. The general public thinks Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga are the height of musical talent. The general public is, and always has been, dumb as dirt. The only thing the general public is good for gauging is who is selling the most of anything on any given day.
March 10th, 2011 at 12:22 am
I think some of us may be drifting away from the original question. I know I was, and I had to go back quite a way to find it.
It was David in Comment #6 who said
“But that brings up a question, are there ten writers in the genre today who will be that familiar to readers in sixty years?”
So there’s the target population, which I assume we can leave the general public out of it. I agree with David. The general public doesn’t read books. Dumb as dirt? Maybe that, too.
The question also does not include sales figures, or even popularity, per se. Which authors will readers still be familiar with? It’s staying power, the question, isn’t it?
To readers of this blog, which may not be around in 60 years, but if it were, I’d go with Father Brown. A small edge, but a solid one.
To the readers of DorothyL, based on my very brief sojourn there, neither one, nor any other author over 60 years dead, save Doyle, Christie and obviously Sayers.
To readers chosen at random from the aisles at Borders, assuming the chain is still around, a possibility even less likely than this blog is still kicking, I’m going to stick with Salander, for the same reasons I stated in Comment #18, with this additional thought. What Larsson has done is not only made Salander a household name (in some houses) but he’s put a huge spotlight on Scandinavian mystery fiction in general.
Neither Chandler nor Hammett wrote all that many books, but they’re still well known, not only for their own fiction, but for being the ones that established their own genre. Consider all the authors who followed them, in their footsteps.
Maybe that’s the reason that Larsson will be remembered. Or maybe we’ll soon discover that Scandinavian mystery fiction has little left to say.
Father Brown or Lisbeth Salander. It’s an interesting choice.
March 10th, 2011 at 1:17 am
Steve you made my point — or one of them. If four out of the ten writers from the 1941 and the later 1970’s list are still on some future list sixty years from now — that says something about them if not the genre. I suspect the four we are thinking of — Doyle, Christie, Sayers, and Hammett will certainly be, and I think you could make a fair argument for Stout and Simenon as outside chances.
I’m not sure who of the current crop might still be around. Based on the sales you get one figure — based on critical importance another. Sales aren’t always the deciding factor. Think how popular Arthur Reeve and Craig Kennedy once were.
I’m really not sure anyone is in that category among today’s crop of genre writers — at least not in critical terms. Quite a few of them likely have individual book sales bigger than Christie or Hammett’s biggest selling book though. The genre is much more mainstream than it once was and most of the major selling writers are found in the Fiction section not Mystery.
The thing to keep in mind is that of the 1941 list, as important and succesful as those writers were — outside genre fiction they barely made a dent in comparative sales and recognition. And yet I would argue they are all better known than 90% of the bestselling writers of their era who were household names then and obscure now.
I don’t know the figures, but was Christie breaking the million mark in sales for individual titles in the late thirties and forties? I know Gardner did (I think the Mason books were selling around 1.5) , and I think THE THIN MAN did, though I’m not sure about FALCON.
As far as I know Spillane was the first genre writer to explode across the best seller list regardless of genre. Not the first to gain attention certainly, but the first to really challenge and out sell mainstream best selling writers to the chagrin of critics and social commentators. Seven of the ten best selling books of the decade is still pretty good even by todays standards.
I was probably hard on the general public — but then again the evidence is not in their favor.
And I grant I could be wrong about Larsson, but I don’t think so. Good as they were and popular as they are I still think they are closer to THE DA VINCI CODE than some of the classics of the genre.
But I will predict in about five years we will all be thouroughly sick of violent, semi autistic, feral young women with troubled pasts and bad attitudes. The tsunami is no doubt about to be upon us. And how long until one of them turns out to be the lost heir of the Scion of Prieure and a part time forensic pathologist who is secretly the only female Knight Templar?
Wait a minute, I have to start typing. I think I can sell that one …
March 10th, 2011 at 2:36 am
I have no doubt about that!
Here’s another question, or several of them, actually. If today’s writers have no staying power — well let’s assume that — why should that be?
Are there too many books, too many authors for a fresh face to be noticed?
Has everything that can be said in a detective or mystery novel already been said?
Are the requirements for writing a hugely successful book “dumbed down” enough that better mysteries are ignored?
Someone in one of these discussions suggested that Ellery Queen’s books and his brand of erudite detective fiction would curl up and die (figuratively speaking) if any publisher were to try to put them out today. True?
And in spite of many many naysayers, Agatha Christie continues to sell and sell and sell. What’s up with that?
March 10th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
Steve
“Are the requirements for writing a hugely successful book “dumbed down†enough that better mysteries are ignored?”
Bingo!
It’s not the writers and its not the readers, its the publishers who package books like frozen food and encourage endless copies of the same thing because it is cheaper to taka a chance on a sure thing than something new or innovative.
Ellery no doubt would struggle with the mass audience today though I think there would be readers who enjoyed them — a few of the later ones are good books by almost any standard.
The problem is a mindset among publishers that is aimed at doing the same books over and over again — why else is it we have endless series by Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, John Jakes, Robert Ludlum, James Patterson — in which their name appears at the top even though their name is all they contributed?
True the same thing was done with the Ellery Queen byline, but not to this extent.
With the big advances, the cost of production, $30 hardbacks and $10 paperbacks, plus advertising, distriution, and competition of other media every books has to be pre-sold before it is finished.
Other than something like Larsson’s books slipping through the mass of books are going to be the literary equivalent of the movie if the week on television, and writers are mostly going to churn out what they can sell unless like Larsson they have a secret demon compelling them to make an effort at something new or different.
When you package books like ice cream you are mostly going to get vanilla.
March 10th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Agatha Christie is one of the best selling authors of all fiction.
I just got back from 2071 and here is the Top Ten list for 2071…
Agatha Christie
Arthur Conan Doyle
Dashiell Hammett
Elmore Leonard
Raymond Chandler
Donald Westlake
Stephen King (early work, his later stuff is ignored)
8. through 10. are writers not yet born and to name them would create a time paradox.
The list will be based on influence on other and new writers. To assume there will never be an important writer or important work after 1941 is to assume mystery is a dead stale never growing genre. You may prefer the classics over modern mysteries but that does not mean today’s writers are less important. How many recent reviews comparing a new writer to Leonard (especially his type of characters) vs Dorothy Sayers. Or King vs Queen. The 1941 Top Ten will not be forgotten, but if the future holds any hope of mysteries surviving there must be new names on the top ten.
March 10th, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Michael
I agree completley. Without new blood the genre is doomed — it’s just right now I don’t see anyone that seems to fill that role.
Larsson might have had a shot, but its hard to do with only three books and dead.
There are some fine writers today, but the best of them often don’t seem to be the top sellers and the top sellers too often aren’t the best.
Elmore Leonard, Ruth Rendell, and P.D. James are all at the end of their careers not the start.
But the good thing is the whole thing is cyclic. The really good writers tend to show up in groups around some movement like the Holmes revolution, the Golden Age, or the rise of the hard boiled school.
Maybe the cozies are producting future classics and I’m too prejudiced to notice.
I just think right now despite some fine writers the genre as a whole is in the doldrums.
Christie is certainly one of the top selling writers of all time — for over all sales. I’m not so sure about individual titles. Dennis Wheatley sold sixty million books (sold not printed) but I don’t think ever made the best seller list. Christie did later in her career, but did she in the Golden Age? Hammett did with THE THIN MAN and Gardner did with Perry Mason, but I wasn’t sure about Christie. I think Van Dine did, and I supect Christie, but I’m not sure on her count.
On that DOCTOR WHO eposode with Christie at the end the Doctor reveals a copy of one of her books from 100,000 years in the future. Like your 2071 list I’m pulling for it to come true.
I just hate to think James Patterson is the best the genre can come up with currently.
March 10th, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Michael —
Very funny. And very true.
But I also note that Stieg Larsson is conspicuously absent. Father Brown is smiling devilishly.
BTW – Where did you park that Delorean? I need to go back to 1983 and fix a VERY big mistake I made.
March 10th, 2011 at 10:02 pm
I’m not buying that in April 1941 (or a bit earlier) Ngaio Marsh would have been America’s (as opposed to Columbia University’s) fourth most popular mystery writer (above Gardner, Stout, Queen, Hammett).
Here is Ngaio’s publishing history in the US before 1940:
Artists in Crime (1938)
Death in a White Tie (1938)
Overture to Death (1939)
Death at the Bar (1940)
Death of a Peer (1940)
Vintage Murder (1940)(orig. 1937)
Now, I do think 1940-41 was a big period for her. She was picked up by a major American publisher (Little, Brown), her most prestigious book, Death of a Peer, was published in 1940 and interest was sufficient to bring about the printing of Vintage Murder, by Sheridan.
Then in 1941 we had:
Death and the Dancing Footman
Enter a Murderer (orig. 1935)(Pocket)
The Nursing-home Murder (orig. 1935) (Sheridan)
Death in Ecstasy (orig. 1936) (Sheridan)
So clearly things were moving in Dame Ngaio’s direction. But among all American mystery readers I suspect Rinehart, Eberhart and Ford might have been ahead of her at that time.
March 10th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Oh, on Chesterton: Chesterton is true literature and true literature will always survive among truly literate people (granted, a diminishing part of the population).
March 11th, 2011 at 8:07 am
Curt, DEATH OF A PEER was voted (in this same poll) “best story read within past six months” followed by Allingham’s TRAITOR’S PURSE.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Yeah, Michael, you can really see the full Crime Queen bloc shaping into its dominant form in these years–and it’s dominated the perception of the Golden age mystery in Britain ever since (about seventy years).