Saturday, July 25, 2009

Top 30 Mystery authors


Today's Blog/Website of the Day is At Home With a Good Book and a Cat ... found at http://misfitandmom.livejournal.com/.


So there's a thread going on over at 4MA about one's 30 Favorite (Mystery) authors. I've resisted so far because I'm sure it changes every day. And what does "favorite" mean in creating this list? Does it mean pure enjoyment regardless of merit or does it mean a list of the authors that one deems to be the best writers of the genre? Are they favorites because they have new books coming out soon or just recently therefore I have more of a warm fuzzy feeling about them than others? Do they go on the list for a body of work or just one good one? Or for one series he/she wrote but not another? What about authors who aren't writing anymore -- should I limit it to current ones? And who cares what I think? My list, of course, will have a preponderance of historical mystery writers because that is my preferred sub-genre. Oh, never mind, let's give it try.



  1. CJ Sansom

  2. Alan Gordon

  3. Ellis Peters

  4. Margaret Frazer

  5. CS Harris

  6. JD Robb

  7. Deanna Raybourn

  8. Arianna Franklin

  9. Susanna Gregory

  10. Susan Hill

  11. Bernard Knight

  12. Deryn Lake

  13. Peter Robinson

  14. Tasha Alexander

  15. Laurie R. King

  16. Steig Larsson

  17. Val McDermid

  18. Karen Maitland

  19. Daniel Hecht

  20. Michael Jecks

  21. Michael Connelly

  22. Reginald Hill

  23. Candace Robb

  24. Will Thomas

  25. Ruth Dudley Edwards

  26. Julia Spencer-Fleming

  27. David Liss

  28. Anne Perry (Monk)

  29. Elizabeth George

  30. Stephen Martin

This was actually very difficult. I've spent way too much time on this list. I've added and deleted a lot of names. Some because I think they're good but I haven't gotten around to reading a bunch like Ian Rankin, some because I think they are top writers like Sayers and Christie or Lawrence Block because I haven't read recently. I haven't even gotten to the Roman histmysts so I can't list them. Some are authors that I've just started reading and I know there's a lot in the series so they are favorable in my view right now. Some not included I like a lot but they don't have "heft" enough yet. It may have been easier to do a list of 10 or 20. Thirty gives too much leeway. I could still swap out about five names and still not be satisfied.


One noticeable thing when I was looking through my black book of things I've read, there's a lot of authors I've enjoyed over even the past five years who are writing anymore. How sad.


Much love,


PK the Bookeemonster

2 comments:

Bernadette said...

I have deliberately not done this list because I too think I would spend far to much time agonising over it and then worry about who I'd left off. I could imagine several hours of my life whizzing past while I worked on it and in the end I still wouldn't have been happy :)

PK the Bookeemonster said...

Exactly!! I resisted, too, for a long time because I knew my list would be heavily tilted toward historical mystery authors and not that many people are interested in that on 4MA. Ah well. :)
A good, tight list of 15 would work better for me I think.
Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster