Lori Roy is the author of Bent Road, winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel; Until She Comes Home, finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; Let Me Die in His Footsteps, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; and The Disappearing.Roy's new novel is Gone Too Long.
At CrimeReads the author tagged five "books that deliver smartly drawn plots, but that also mine the greater moral issues that make us all part of the story," including:
The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond ChandlerRead about the other entries on the list.
When my second novel was close to coming out, a friend emailed me a link to an article about a research study. In the study, three people, via a computer game, threw a digital ball back and forth. At a certain point, one person was excluded for no apparentreason. Upon studying the physical response of the excluded person, researches found that the need to belong is so strong in human beings that when excluded, they experience a physical pain such that it can be treated with Tylenol. Raymond Chandler, who became a writer after losing his job during the Great Depression, is widely credited with being the founder of the hardboiled crime novel. But I include him here today for his examination of this desperate need to belong, a need most certainly tied to our very survival. Specifically, the need for acceptance and the crushing loneliness when we are denied it is at the heart of The Long Goodbye, the sixth of his seven novels.
The Long Goodbye is among Joseph Knox's four top books for crime lovers, the ten top adaptations tagged by Guardian and Observer critics, Benjamin Black's five favorite works of noir, Melissa Albert's top four books that will drive all but the staunchest teetotaler to the nearest cocktail shaker, some Guardian readers' ten best writers in novels, David Nobbs's top five faked deaths in fiction, Malcolm Jones's ten favorite crime novels, David Nicholls' ten favorite film adaptations, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best fake deaths in fiction.
--Marshal Zeringue
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