Weighty expectations

I've recently started one book and borrowed another, both of which raise great expectations in the fiction-to-be-taken seriously department.

Abdelilah Hamdouchi's The Final Bet is the first Arabic-language detective novel to be translated into English, according to the jacket copy, and its author one of the first to write detective fiction in Arabic.

Chingiz Aitmatov's The Place of the Skull not only bears a jacket blurb from Arthur Miller, but the Times Literary Supplement called it "arguably the most representative text of the Gorbachev thaw." Not novel or book, but most representative text, mind you.

Now, while I see if these novels live up to their weighty promise, I'll ask you to ponder this difficult question of weightiness.

Leonardo Sciascia comes to mind for his acceptance and impeccable credentials both as an important crime author and as an important author, period, no qualification.

What crime writers enjoy similar acceptance both as masters of their genre and as important writers even to those who may not read crime fiction? How do you feel about claims for importance on behalf of crime stories?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008