Customer Reviews

The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives

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"I applied my heart to know,
To search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things,
To know the wickedness of folly,
Even of foolishness and madness." -- Ecclesiastes 7:25

How many people would read about Sherlock Holmes if the stories were merely clever puzzles, rather than also being fascinating studies in character, of Holmes, Watson, the criminals, and often the victims?

Occasionally, you will bump into a terrific article where an author talks candidly about the origins of his or her detective, PI, or righter of wrongs. Those experiences leave you hungry for more.

Well, you've been blessed this year. Otto Penzler has assembled a world-class cast of authors and their characters for you to explore from the authors' perspectives. In many cases, the authors wrote new fictional material featuring their detectives (often in the form of interviews) that is some of the best writing those authors have ever done in my humble opinion.

Unless you are an omnivorous consumer of crime, detective, and police fiction, chances are that some of these characters are new to you. After you read a little about the characters and their story lines, I guarantee you'll find some great new books to read. What a delight!

The profits from the book also help keep The Mysterious Bookshop in business, where I've had all of my best signings with mystery authors.

The pieces address subjects such as how the author came to write mysteries, how the character was originally conceived, where the name came from, why the character developed in the way that she or he did, and many perspectives concerning how the author thinks about the character. It's fascinating.

I have heard many of these authors speak about their books, and these essays and stories are way better than the in-person talks. Don't miss them.

If you are interested in learning more about how to write mysteries, this book is also a must!

Here are the authors and characters covered in the book:

Jack Taylor by Ken Brown
Jack Reacher by Lee Child
Harry Bosch by Michael Connelly
Charlie Parker by John Connolly
Elvis Cole and Joe Pike by Robert Crais

Lincoln Rhyme by Jeffrey Deaver
Inspector Morse by Colin Dexter
Charlie Resnick by John Harvey
Bob Lee Swagger by Stephen Hunter
Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus by Faye Kellerman

Alex Delaware by Jonathan Kellerman
Dismas Hardy by John Lescroart
Tess Monaghan by Laura Lippman
Rambo by David Morrell
Mallory by Carol O'Connell

Spenser by Robert B. Parker
Lou Boldt by Ridley Pearson
Charlotte and Thomas Pitt by Anne Perry
Aloysius X. L. Pendergast by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
John Rebus by Ian Rankin

Precious Ramotswe by Alexander McCall Smith

For mystery thriller fans alike whether it be Ken Bruen and his character, Jack Taylor or Jonathan Kellerman and his character Alex Delaware, then you will enjoy The Lineup. Edited by Otto Penzler. This book lets readers into the minds of crime writers. The authors share the back ground story about how they developed their characters, why they became authors, and even share some about their next book.

I enjoyed reading about Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor. It made him more interesting to me and now I will give his books another try. It was fun learning about Michael Connelly's childhood and where he grew up. Ever wonder how Mr. Connelly came up with the name Hieronymus Bosch...well you will just have to read about it in The Lineup. There are many authors that are new to me in this book. The Lineup became like a wish list for me of authors and their books I want to read. So if you want the inside scoop on your favorite crime authors...look no further than The Lineup.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book. I found it fascinating reading about different authors and their varied approaches to writing. Each author had a short story and some of them interviewed their characters, some told how the characters came to be and some expounded on the writing process. I really was interested inlearning some of the authors said their characters talked to them and directed the stories and others who said they planned their books in detail.
It was interesting to read the authors viewpoints of themselves. One of them, Jonathon Kellerman, told about what a great listener he was and how much he liked to interact with readers. I met Mr. Kellerman at a Tony Hillerman Mystery Writer Conference and he was the most closed off author I have ever met. Because I am such a book nerd, I have been to many author talks and literary conferences and I have never met anyone who seemed not to care about talking to his readers. He fixed his stare above people shoulders to avoid eye contact and told one person that he didn't care what they thought of Alex's love life. He was simply one of the rudest people I'ver ever met. I haven't picked up an Alex Delaware book since. He doesn't care about his readers, I don't care about his books.
It's just an example of how enthralling it is to read about the author's point of view.

The Lineup is a crime fiction fan's dream, a compilation of twenty one essays by today's top crime writers, all dealing with the major characters they've created. Thus, readers are treated to, among others, well crafted pieces about Jack Reacher by Lee Child, Spencer by the late Robert B. Parker, Rambo by David Morrell, Tess Monaghan by Laura Lippman, Bob Lee Swagger by Stephen Hunter and Mallory by Carol O'Connell. As editor Penzler points out in his introduction, the writers take "many different and colorful approaches to telling readers previously unknown facts about their creations. There are short stories tucked into the biographies, interviews of the characters, revealing looks into the authors' lives and creative processes, and even frequent insights into the characters that came as revelations to their creators." All the essays are uniformly excellent, showing a level of engagement rarely seen in an anthology, as the essayists are writing about their brainchildren, the characters that have consumed so much of their lives, and have in turn made them commercially successful. Readers will be thrilled by the pieces about protagonists and writers they are familiar with, and conceive a desperate need to seek out works featuring the characters that they're being introduced to for the first time.

This isn't the kind of book that usually grabs my attention, but it did win a big award last year and it does have a few authors in it I like, so I figured it was worth dipping into. It appears to have had its genesis in a series of essays put out by the Mysterious Bookstore, all of which have been collected into this volume. In skimming the table of contents, I immediately took issue with the book's subtitle of "The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives." First of all, the "World" isn't represented beyond the US and UK. Secondly, using the word "Greatest" is always ill-advised for anthologies like this, since invariably people will argue with that designation (for example, there's no Elmore Leonard here). Third, the phrase "Crime Writers" is invoked when a good number of the authors included are best described as "Thriller Writers" and along those lines, many of the characters discussed are not really "Detectives", they're more heroes or protagonists. So, there's plenty to quibble with in terms of how the book is presented.

However, once you're past that, the individual essays are generally pretty decent. Some are very straightforward, some are arranged as Q&As, at least one is written as a faux newspaper article, and some are more like drifting meditations. I read the ones by Ken Bruen (haven't liked his fractured prose in the past, didn't really like it here), Michael Connelly, Colin Dexter (kind of a fussy piece that strays way off target into TV adaptation), John Harvey (very interesting explanation of why his books were set in Nottingham), Laura Lippman (again being a little too cute for my taste), Robert Parker (a dashed off scene of fiction), and Ian Rankin (a nice overview of his early career). My two favorite pieces were probably David Morrell talking about his misunderstood character Rambo (not exactly the first character you expect to find in a book about "Greatest Detectives"), and Alexander McCall Smith's loving ode to the Africa that inspired Previous Ramotswe.

Probably worth dipping into if you're a fan of some of the writers, but otherwise of limited interest.

Ever wonder where the birth of your favorite character's origins? This audio production is how your favorite mystery writers came up with their genesis of their legendary characters that we call have loved over the years.

This mystery omnibus is a wonderful collection for all the mystery fans in your life. If you read the book, you will love it. When you listen to the book in an audio format, you will like 2/3 of the production. The weakest link in the narration skills of John Alan Nelson. You can hear his stiff narrating skills in this production. It drags the whole production down.

Otto Penzler is one of the best mystery editor who know the world of mystery fiction. So this collection is worth it alone for its text.

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

So you've read all of this writer, or that one. What now? Try this book for samples of various detective writers work. Akin to a buffet, you can sample work without getting invested in time (and money if you buy the book) first. Very nice way to 'try 'em on'.

Interesting to see different writers approach an assignment. If you are a mystery reader, you will find something to like here. Very interesting to see the same names appear as inspiration for these very talented people. I'd love to see more.

We saw many of our favorite authors were in this book, along with many more we were not familar with. So we thought we would find some new authors. Unfortunately, the authors we were not familar with were not that appealing. Some of the writeups were very good, however, and we enjoyed them.