The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion
Favorite Authors/Books/Series
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Longest running series?
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How about - Stone Barrington by Stuart Woods - I have not read the series but it seems like there is always a new Barrington book coming out.
Dena wrote: "What about Rex Stout his Nero Wolfe series went on for over 50 years"He probably considers those books too short, too.
Most of the Wolfe and Poirot books are a couple of hundred pages. But it sounds like he prefers the writers who don't know when to stop or don't have editors who believe in conciseness.
I actually haven't read any of those. I've heard of Nero Wolfe of course, but not sure about the length there. I do like short stories and a quick read, but most books I read are at least 400 pages or close to that. Nothing against the shorter stuff :)
Rex Stout and Ngaio Marsh are definitely in the lead it seems. Never even heard of Marsh actually...Stone Barrington is from what I can see just about on the same as Lucas Davenport.
I'm not a fan of series mysteries. The author always gets lazy with them. I do like Tana French's mysteries about the Dublin Murder Squad. The first was IN THE WOODS, the second and weakest THE LIKENESS and the most recent FAITHFUL PLACE that made it onto NY Times BEST BOOks of 2010. Each book has a different narrator, but the setting, etc. is similar. She breaks genre rules in a shocking way as well, but won't go into it in case someone hasn't read her.
Andreas wrote: "I actually haven't read any of those. I've heard of Nero Wolfe of course, but not sure about the length there. I do like short stories and a quick read, but most books I read are at least 400 page..."
The adage "size matters" doesn't really apply to books.
Margery Allingham's series of Albert Campion books should also be on that list of long-running series. But they may fall under the "short" books rule.The most prolific mystery writer of all time is Georges Simenon and his Maigret series.....but they are also short.
Surely Dame Agatha wins. HP, Marple, Harley Quin. Edgar Wallace had a great number.
Frankly I'm beginning to really miss Robert B Parker. Talk about fun and fast beach reads. And my husband still misses John D. McDonald. He wanted to BE Travis McGee. But I realize these series aren't as long as some you all have mentioned.Cynthia Thomason
Without considering length of the book, at a quick check of the series I've read at one time or another, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series looks like it is at the top with 47 books in the series. Robert Parker's Spenser series had 40, Christie's Poirot series comes in at 39, and Dell Shannon had 37 in her LAPD series.I suspect the "In Death" series by J. D. Robb may surpass these eventually with 33 now published and two a year being written.
Slightly off topic ... thanks fot mentioning Nero Wolfe. I read those years ago, and now I think I'd like to read them again!
Erle Stanley Gardner had several lengthy series.Perry Mason books came out for 40 years, including after his death.
As A.A. Fair he had another series about the Cool Detective Agency for +30 years.
Genine wrote: "Slightly off topic ... thanks fot mentioning Nero Wolfe. I read those years ago, and now I think I'd like to read them again!"I re-read some of them this year, that was what made me think of them. I read a lot of them when I was much younger, he didn't have as many books then. Jk
Sue Grafton's "alphabet" series Featuring P.I. Kinsey Millhone is quite long-running. She just released the 22nd book in the series.
Hi Guys I Am answering to your LONG --Running Series-- Well James Lee Burke'S
Dave Robicheaux and BILLY BOB HOLLAND and now HACKBERRY HOLLAND
great CHARACTERS GREAT AURTHOR
Jill wrote: "Margery Allingham's series of Albert Campion books should also be on that list of long-running series. But they may fall under the "short" books rule.The most prolific mystery writer of all time ..."
Being a bit of a "biblioluddite", I would have to give the nod to writers like Allingham, Simenon, MacDonald, McBain, Ambler, etc as they were actually WRITTEN. The more prolific contemporary authors have the advantage of being able to input plots and characters into the computer, pull up previous actions and descriptions and then produce a book (such as the two a year Robb books, or the Flowers/Davenport books). The old school writers had to keep track of all of these things manually, as well as their references and research.
There was a reason the books were only a couple of hundred pages!! Think of all the time it took with an actual typewriter.
Now, off the soapbox. Ruth Rendell's Wexford series started in 1964 and the 23rd title is soon to be released.
stan wrote: "Hi Guys I Am answering to your LONG --Running Series-- Well James Lee Burke'S
Dave Robicheaux and BILLY BOB HOLLAND and now HACKBERRY HOLLAND
great CHARACTERS GREAT AURTHOR"
I agree Stan. James Lee Burke is terrific!
Gardner wrote over 80 Perry Mason novels. Most were pretty short, so I guess they don't qualify by Andreas' standards.Parker had over 40 Spenser novels, the early one were very short. Looking at the list it seems that the longer novels in these series, tend to be by more contemporary authors. Historically, the Christies, Hammetts, Stout, etc. were all short.
So are authors getting more long winded, or do us consumers just demand more pages for our dollar?
Vince wrote: "Gardner wrote over 80 Perry Mason novels. Most were pretty short, so I guess they don't qualify by Andreas' standards.Parker had over 40 Spenser novels, the early one were very short. Looking at ..."
Interesting question. I prefer a fat book, just because it lasts longer. However, if it isn't very good, that's not necessarily a good thing. A well-written slim book is wonderful.
A VERY good point Cheryl. I hadn't even thought of that.
Vince wrote: "Gardner wrote over 80 Perry Mason novels. Most were pretty short, so I guess they don't qualify by Andreas' standards.Parker had over 40 Spenser novels, the early one were very short. Once again I just want to clarify that I don't mind the shorter books - I love to be able to read one in just a few hours or so. And I've read criminally few of the older legends of crime...
Usually I prefer a crime novel to be around 400 pages. I feel the shorter ones often don't have enough depth of character and the mystery might be a bit too easy to solve - not enough red herrings and suspects perhaps. It really depends on the book - some I wish could go on for a LOOOONG time, but that is usually not true in the crime genre for me.
Andreas wrote:"I feel the shorter ones often don't have enough depth of character and the mystery might be a bit too easy to solve - not enough red herrings and suspects perhaps. It really depends on the book - some I wish could go on for a LOOOONG time, but that is usually not true in the crime genre for me."Andreas, good point about the character development. I think that many of the older classic mystery novels were more about the puzzle...i.e "whodunit". Many of those books had characters with as much depth as Professor Plum", but the "who" and the "how" were what kept you reading.
In most contemporary thrillers, even the series characters change and are impacted by the things that happened in previous novels. From my memory (I have not read some of these in decades), the Poirots, Wolfe, etc. are the same in every book. You can pick any book in the series, and not be at a loss by not knowing what happened to the character in previous outings.
Regarding the character development, I find that in many of the contemporary series the author will frequently "rehash" some of the characters' background. Linda Fairstein's Alexandria Cooper series is a prime example - each novel has a passage regarding the main characters background and history. Although I've read them all (and in order, anal as I am), I realize that, for the author, this "introduces" each character to a new reader, but it sort of pads each novel. Thank you, Andreas, for the comment regarding my rant. One thing I noticed in the Ruth Rendell series was that the early novels - written in the 60's and early 70's were much shorter than the more recent novels. Same thing with the Spenser novels.
What's that saying, "If I'd had more time I'd have written a shorter letter?" I don't mind a long book (Les Miserable and Anna Karenina are two of my favorite books of all time), so long as the content is engaging and conveys important information. But I find that with many books written in the past 20 years or so there is a lot of filler and I end up skimming sections rather than reading. Elizabeth George came to my mind as well, Marjorie. That rarely happens when I read an older book.
I'm not sure whether it's laziness to "write long" or an inability/unwillingness to edit (either one's own work or that of a client) or just a personal preference. I tend to like something more in the middle -- more detail than some of the older works but not so much as some recent tomes. I think that's one of the reasons why I like P.D. James -- IMO, she has a nice balance of detail and concise writing; what's on the page is valuable, not just taking up space.
One of the things I find amusing is that some of these long-ish books are then abridged for the audiobook. Well, if I can understand the characters and the story in half of the time it takes to read the book out loud, why can't I get that in the written version!
Elizabeth George's books is actually one of the few books I gave up on after reading about a third of it. I hardly ever give up on books, but that one was just so incredibly boring I couldn't stand it. Only one other book I ever gave up on I think, and that was one by Murakami(hardboiled something or other... - utter rubbish). I also skipped huge parts of the end of the VERY overlong The Swarm. The ending went on for AT LEAST 50 pages too many. Goes to show that longer books arenæt necessarily better :)
It was Lord Chesterton, in a letter to his son, apologizing for having written such a long letter because he hadn't enough time to write a short one.
I love that quote, Jane and Susan. Being concise and precise is time consuming.
Ed Mcbain's 87th precient series has 40+ books.
Nero Wolfe 1948-1965, 39 booksPerry Mason 1933-1973, 85 books
see http://www.t-one.net/~om/read/mystery...
Joan wrote: "Nero Wolfe 1948-1965, 39 booksPerry Mason 1933-1973, 85 books
see http://www.t-one.net/~om/read/mystery..."
I always enjoyed the Perry Mason books - short, easy to read, clever plots. Now that you reminded me about them I think I'll get a couple out of the library :)
Are we talking about longest series by years or the number of books about a continuing character? Some writers may write several books a year with a continuing character over a period of a few years...... while other writers pace themselves over many years, thereby having less books than the former. Probably the two most prolific writers based on number of books written are Edgar Wallace and Georges Simenon. And as noted by Joan in post #33, Rex Stout and Erle Stanley Gardner had long years of production with less numbers of books than Wallace and Simenon.BTW, I would recommend Simenon but would not recommend Wallace (except for his non-mystery book "Sanders of the River").
The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group
Authors mentioned in this topic
Rex Stout (other topics)Ngaio Marsh (other topics)
Rex Stout (other topics)
Stuart Woods (other topics)
So, does anyone have any ideas? It has to be proper books, not short stories or very short novels (like McBain's 37th(?) Precinct novels), and they have to be written by the same author. If I "disqualify" Poirot for the books being short, I would think Sandford's Davenport novels come pretty close...