Twelve Percent
P.I. Novels Among H.R.F. Keating's
Crime & Mystery-The 100 Best Books

Well-respected mystery critic H.R.F. Keating's 1987 . book, Crime & Mystery-The 100 Best Books, collected 100 short essays on what he considered the 100 best crime and mystery books from1845 to 1986, or at least the 100 books he most enjoyed. An enlightening, sometimes controversial, but always entertaining book. And among those 100 books, the P.I. genre was well-represented, including (in chronological order):

• Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (The Continental Op)
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (Sam Spade)
• The Case of the Sulky Girl by Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason)
• The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe)
• The High Window by Raymond Chandler (Philip Marlowe)
• The Fabulous Clipjoint by Frederic Brown (Ed and Am Hunter)
• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (Philip Marlowe)
• Blind Man With a Pistol by Chester Himes (Coffin Ed johnson and Grave Digger Jones)
• Fletch by Gregory McDonald (Fletch-duh!)
• The Blue Hammer by Ross Macdonald (Lew Archer)
• Skinflick by Joseph Hansen (Dave Brandstetter)
• The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald (Travis McGee)