How much list could the Booklist list if the Booklist could list books?

Quite a lot of list, actually. Bill Ott's list of 2008's best crime novels includes his ten best of the year plus six best crime-fiction debuts plus five best new installments in long-running series. That last item especially should earn Ott an award for creative list-making.

What really makes his lists stand out, though, is that he states his criteria at the outset. This seems like an obvious thing to do, but most list-compilers never do it. That failure, more than anything else, accounts for the endless ear bending, bandwidth consuming and time wasting that follow the publication of most top 10, 50 or 100 lists.

Ott's predisposition is for the darker regions of crime fiction. At the same time, he is not dogmatic, nor is he condescending about other kinds of crime.

"(L)et’s face this issue squarely," he writes. "As crime fiction continues to attract more and more writers of a distinctly literary bent who want to use the genre to build multifaceted characters and to explore sensitive social issues and address questions of profound moral ambiguity, it is almost inevitable that darker worldviews and less formulaic plots will come to dominate `best' lists. ... But don’t get us wrong: sometimes a good cozy hits the spot just perfectly. Just not this year on this list."

That's a thoughtful assessment, and it lets the reader know exactly where Ott stands. One can't ask more than that, which is why Bill Ott's tops my list of best lists.

What about you, readers? What's your favorite list, preferably but not necessarily of crime fiction? And what makes a good list? Novelty of conception? Of content? Agreement with your preferences? Careful thought on the list maker's part?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Blogger shows author some love, or More about Michael Dibdin

I got on Michael Dibdin’s case yesterday; today I’m pleased to pass along a thoughtful article from Booklist via the Librarian's Place that says his Aurelio Zen series “launched what eventually would become the still-flourishing renaissance of the Italian crime novel.”

But Dibdin was even more influential than that, according to author Bill Ott: “(W)ith Zen came the distinctive world-weariness that eventually would define the new European procedural, not only in Italy but also in Scandinavia.”

That, readers, is big. And Ott just might be right. The dates work. Dibdin published the first Aurelio Zen novel in 1988. That predates Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander and Andrea Camilleri’s Salvo Montalbano. Ian Rankin published his first John Rebus novel in 1987, but the series did not hit its stride for a few years. In sum, Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen may be the most influential crime-fiction character of the past twenty years.

What do you think? Who is more influential as a world-weary fictional detective than Aurelio Zen? If you haven’t met Zen, who are your favorite such detectives?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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A guide to hard-boiled crime in Scandinavia

Petrona provides a link to a Hard Boiled Gazeteer to Scandinavia by Bill Ott. Ott traces the explosion of interest in Scandinavian crime writing to the fall of the Iron Curtain: "The breaking down of the Soviet Union, combined with liberal immigration policies in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, sent immigrants pouring into a region that had been defined by its insularity and lack of diversity. The resulting culture clash turned the tables on a lot of societal assumptions, prompting the same kind of racist hate crimes that have plagued the U.S. and other parts of Europe. Here was a hard-boiled melting pot waiting to be cracked."

Ott omits Norway's Jo Nesbø and his hard-boiled protagonist Harry Hole, but that's my only complaint based on a quick first look at the article. More comments will likely follow.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007