{"id":68804,"date":"2020-05-17T21:54:19","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T01:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=68804"},"modified":"2022-05-27T12:21:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T16:21:18","slug":"reading-thrills-with-john-sinclair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2020\/05\/17\/reading-thrills-with-john-sinclair\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading thrills with John Sinclair"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been an insatiable reader since I was a small child. My mother was an English teacher and she imbued me with her love and command of language at an early age. All my life I\u2019ve devoured book after book, turning in my maturity to two types of literature that claim my attention: musician and writer biographies and contemporary crime fiction.<\/p>\n

My reading thrills come from crime novels by an assortment of great writers starting with the godfather of noir fiction, Raymond Chandler, and culminating with a guy called Lee Child, who has written a remarkable series of books starring the indestructible Jack Reacher.<\/p>\n

I read all the books written by these authors, some of them over and over again, always succumbing to the brilliance of their writing and the imaginative range of their plots. So I won\u2019t try in this essay to single out any one book by any of the writers but will list some of their greatest, and my most favorite\u2014works.<\/p>\n

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
\n–Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Raymond Chandler<\/strong> more or less created this popular literary genre in the 1920s with books like The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake, The Long Goodbye, Trouble Is My Business, <\/em>and The Simple Act of Murder. <\/em>Each is worth your reading time as well as anything else written by this great author.<\/p>\n

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.
\n–Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1930)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dashiell Hammett<\/strong> was an accomplished writer who turned to crime fiction in the 1920s to realize his great potential, which shines forth in works like The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest, The Thin Man, <\/em>and The Dain Curse. <\/em>A terrific introduction to his work is the collection of short fiction called The Big Knockover and Other Stories.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have a secret passion for mercy. But justice is what keeps happening to people.
\n– Ross MacDonald, The Goodbye Look<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ross MacDonald<\/a> <\/strong>emerged as the most incisive crime fighter of his generation with The Moving Target<\/em> in 1949, followed by The Galton Case, The Drowning Pool, The Chill, The Blue Hammer, The Goodbye Look <\/em>(featuring his great modern detective, Lew Archer), Black Money, The Barbarous Coast, <\/em>and others.<\/p>\n

Don’t go into great detail describing places and things, unless you’re \u00adMargaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
\n– Elmore Leonard, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n