Friday, November 19, 2010

Top 10 crime locations

The crime fiction expert and novelist Maxim Jakubowski named his top ten crime locations for the Guardian.

One entry on the list:
Los Angeles in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939)

Although Michael Connelly is fast becoming the bard of modern Los Angeles, Chandler remains the pioneer whose iconic Philip Marlowe novels define the city's mean streets and sprawl. From rich mansions to backstreet dives, shady bookstores and cheap hotel rooms, Chandler captures the essence of a city in flux between affluence and despair with tarnished knight Marlowe at the helm.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Big Sleep also appears on Barry Forshaw's critic's chart of six American noir masters, David Nicholls' list of favorite film adaptations, Greil Marcus' list of book recommendations, and the Guardian's list of ten of the best smokes in literature.

Read more about Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction, a volume of 21 essays about cities and other places in the world that are closely associated with famous fictional sleuths, edited by

--Marshal Zeringue