Detectives and private investigators, Who are your favorites?
La Disparition by perec
The Big SleepOedipus Rex
I love Poirot stuff too
and the derrida/lacan joint book on the Purloined Letter was hilarious
Doc Sportello
>>7490380
did you watch the movie
>>7490217
Philip Marlowe is a baller, but I prefer Lew Archer. He is a little more world-weary and sympathetic.
I also really like the detectives in James Crumley's stories. Milo and C.W. Sughrue. Crumey's books are criminally underrated, or at least underread. I think /lit/ would enjoy his books a lot. The Last Good Kiss is like Philip Marlowe crossed with Hunter Thompson. The first line is arguably the best in the genre:
>When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
Father Brown desu senpai
Not /lit/, but Jimmy McNulty, of course.
Nicky Belane
>>7490217
Fenner is great (Hardley Chase)
and of course the almighty Sam Spade
best duo is without a doubt Ed Coffin / John Gravedigger
but I tend to enjoy more small time, no name privates you can find in most noir fictions
M A R LO W E
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Chandler's prose is massively underrated desu
>>7492615
Yeah, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed. Chester Himes rules.
>>7492542
eh i thought pulp sucked
Genre fiction is usually questionable but all the table-flipping stuff Christie did was respectable, so Poirot, I guess
The best though is>>>/tv/
>>7490217
A lot have already mentioned the classics.
I thought a good modern detective was Lionel Essrog in Motherless Brooklyn.
The character is a bit gimmicky (suffers from Tourette syndrome), but overall feels very much like a detective character of old.
>>7492749
This... any real conversation on detective fiction begins and ends with Poirot, Dupin and Holmes.
As for a more modern example... what about Herbert Stencil?
>>7492749
Christie's stuff is certainly entertaining and there's a few gems in her writing (like And Then There Were None) but a lot of it is pretty standard fare - not bad exactly, but unremarkable. Poirot has a few good ones (Orient Express), but the weaker parts of the series are at generic if not plain mediocre.
>>7492776
I agree, hence "table-flipping"
I'm talking specifically about And Then There Were Nonewhere the killer is one of the already-dead victimsOrient Expresswhere each and every one of the suspects is guiltyand Roger Ackroydwhere the narrator is the murdererwhich you're stupid for not mentioning because that's hands down the most amazing twist in all of detective fiction
>>7492513
I would pay good money for a McNulty/Ray Velcoro crossover series.
>>7490380
>>7492695
Seconding these.
>>7492749
>>7492776
I go back and forth on Christie. I don't think she was a great writer, but she is responsible for a lot of genre paradigms.
Never liked Poirot, though. And from what I've read, Christie actually hated him.
>>7492805
Mystery as a genre is usually very plot-driven, and Christie had a thing for good plots. Her writing isn't exceptional but when she puts together a good enough story the whole story holds up. Ofcourse, when her story game is weak you end up with something that is comfy at best or just forgettable pulp.
Herbert Stencil
Oedipa Maas
Tyrone Slothrop
Brock Vond
Lew Basnight
Doc Sportello
Maxine Tarnow
Grahame Greenes Gun for Sale is fucking great
You guys read any James Ellroy? I read Black Dahlia a few years ago an really like it - as far as mystery goes, it's pretty /lit/.
Master Li
>>7490217
Joe Pitt.
Mcnutty
Sherlock "fuck the niggers" Holmes
The OG PI, nothing but fists and strong English blood to see him through
>>7490380
Unrelated but the part where Doc smokes PCP that could "knock over an elephant" it's interesting how the elongated brown joint is alluded to as an elephant gun, a classic weapon not often seen (just like PCP is rarely used these days)
>>7492745
Plot wise maybe, but there was hardly any line where I didn't laugh.
