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It’s a genre that is magnetic as it is enthralling, and people are drawn to it like moths to a flame. Crime fiction, especially the books that tell a good story and make you sweat till the end to reveal the villain, are natural best sellers. A rainy afternoon stuck at home, a boring flight where you have nothing else to do, or even a free weekend when you prefer to stay at home curled up with a good thriller rather than socialize – there is no fixed time to read a great crime fiction novel.
There are two genres of crime fiction – one in which you don’t know who the perpetrator is till the end, and the other in which you (the reader) know who did it, and only need to see how the hero/heroine solves the crime. In my book, the author of a whodunit is pretty important to the story, because there are some who are detail-oriented and others who are thought-driven. So, according to me, here are a few authors I rank highly when it comes to crime fiction:
- Jeffrey Deaver: One of the few modern day authors who really know the ins and outs of crime and the ways to solve it; Deaver’s protagonist Lincoln Rhyme makes things more interesting because he is a quadriplegic who is tied down to a wheelchair and can move just one finger in the area below his neck. He is ably helped by his love interest and ace detective Amelia Sachs. With one of them in the field and the other using just his brains to solve the crime, the perps have to stay one step ahead if they are to beat Rhyme and his team. Deaver’s books are intriguing because of the detail that goes into the solving of the crime.
- Agatha Christie: Arguably the greatest crime fiction writer of our times, Christie wrote many books with different protagonists. Be it the dapper Hercule Poirot who solved crimes using just his “grey cells” (he deplored the legwork that goes with normal methods of solving crime) to the quirky and old Jane Marple who solves crime with just her interest in other people’s affairs, Christie makes you wait till the last page to reveal who the culprit is. Sometimes, like in the book Death on the Nile, she proves how the one person who could not have committed the crime actually did it.
- Earl Stanley Gardner: Now most people know that Gardner wrote about law and the workings of a courtroom. But Perry Mason, that enterprising and unconventional trial lawyer, is always the one who solves the case. He does it through a series of arguments, sometimes taking risks and tampering with the evidence just barely within the boundaries of the law. But he always manages to come out trumps in the end, usually a very dramatic and thrilling end, because of his intuition and his dogged determination to save his client, usually a buxom and beautiful blonde or brunette.
- Arthur Conan Doyle: If I left this great man and Sherlock Holmes out of this list, it would not be a list of great crime fiction writers at all. Holmes manages to crack even the most bizarre mysteries that are narrated by his friend Dr. Watson. Although they are a bit verbose, Doyle’s writing does hold you spellbound as you wait to see how and why the crime was committed, and of course, who did it.
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