Six great works at the intersection of crime & literary fiction

Adam White grew up in Damariscotta, Maine, and now lives with his wife and son in Boston, where he teaches writing and coaches lacrosse. He holds an MFA from Columbia University.

The Midcoast is his first novel.

At CrimeReads White tagged six "great works of literary fiction that take, as their subjects, characters who’ve chosen a life of crime." One title on the list:

American Pastoral, Philip Roth

At the heart of this novel is a bombing. The bombing is an act of domestic terrorism or political protest, depending on your perspective. And this novel offers a masterclass in perspective. The bomb destroys a post office in a small idyllic town, but what Roth—and his narrator, Zuckerman—are most interested in is what’s been packed around the detonator, all the shrapnel of American life. Specifically upper-class Jewish life in New Jersey, although that’s a description of the book that doesn’t get nearly specific enough. The life of Swede Levov—former athlete, blond Jew, married to a former Miss New Jersey named Dawn—becomes a full life, a real life, and by the end of the book we know him to the bones, and we understand why the criminal acts that have torn apart his family represent the kind of detonations that ripped apart the country in the middle of the last century.

Read about the other entries on the list.

American Pastoral is on Lionel Shriver’s list of four favorite novels about terrorism, Justin Cartwright's top ten list of novels about societies under stress, Sheila Hancock's list of her six best books, Maria Semple's list of her six best books, and among Ward Just's five favorite novels about the pursuit of money. It appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best riots in literature and Jason Diamond's list of "The 50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years."

--Marshal Zeringue