100 Favorites Mysteries of the Century - Introduction

This is the introduction to our 2000 book 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century, describing the process that the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association used to compile the list and early reaction to the list:

We’d like to introduce you to one hundred of our best friends.

As booksellers who specialize in mysteries, we offer our customers tens of thousands of titles — whodunits, thrillers, caper novels, espionage tales. We’re matchmakers, putting the right books into the hands of the right people. We know everything there is to know about all of these books, if not off the tops of our heads, then through the reference books and other tools we keep close at hand. Looking for something great to read? We stand ready to help.

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association represents booksellers from all types of businesses wholly or substantially devoted to the sale of mystery books. Some work in traditional stores, some are mail-order dealers and others work off the Internet — many do all three at once. Most of our members sell both new and used books; others specialize in one or the other, or in signed books or first editions for collectors or any number of other special niches.

What we have in common is our love of mysteries, and our eagerness to share this passion with you. The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association’s 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century list represents the accumulated wisdom of the most knowledgeable people in the business. These are the books that we most enjoy, the books that we present to our customers over and over again, and the books that we ourselves return to when we want to visit with cherished friends.

We put together this list in the last quarter of 1999, as part of the end of the century hoopla. As we approach the “real” end of the century on December 31, 2000, we have assembled this book to explain and expand on our choices.

Last fall, we began by asking online IMBA members — those participating in our daily email list — to nominate their 100 favorite books. Over 700 titles were nominated in this first round. After tallying votes, we engaged in several weeks of lively email discussion in which we reminded each other of favorites, and weighed the merits of various authors and titles. Then we conducted a second round of voting to narrow the list.

The hardest decision that we had to make early on was to limit each author to just one title on the final list. This was especially difficult for authors who write several different kinds of mysteries, and it also proved challenging when we considered some of the more prolific mystery authors. In the end, however, we were for the most part able to rally support for one title by each of these authors. (Though, as you’ll see in Part II of this book, not always.) Just as readers like to start series with the first entry, we had a preference — though not a rule — for firsts in series. This is where many of us first discovered these authors, and their fresh voices left lasting impressions.

At this point, there were about 85 titles that had support from a significant number of stores — and still dozens more to compete for the last few slots on the list. I asked Pat Kehde of The Raven Bookstore (Lawrence, Kansas) and Kathleen Riley of Black Bird Mysteries (Keedysville, Maryland) to work with me as a committee to finalize the list based on the votes and other instructions of all participating businesses.

The most surprising aspect of this process, as Kate Birkel of The Mystery Bookstore (Omaha, Nebraska) notes in her comments in Part II, is how much agreement there was among this diverse group of booksellers. To be sure, there were differences of opinion and our email exchanges were sometimes vigorous and impassioned. And at each stage of the process, the narrowing down was agonizingly difficult — even at that first stage where we could each list a whole 100 titles. (100 is not as many as you think.) It was also true that some booksellers viewed the task differently from others, trying to think in terms of “best” in addition to “favorite.” Clearly, there’s a correlation between the “best mysteries of the century” and “our favorite mysteries of the century.” But they are not the same thing. These differences tended to balance out through the participation of lots and lots of people.

We left off many historically significant titles. There’s no question that titles like Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury had a major impact on the development of the mystery story — but that was not the criterion that we were using.

It’s also worth emphasizing that this is a list of 100 favorite books, and not a list of 100 favorite authors. It’s startling to realize that classic writers such as Erle Stanley Gardner and Emma Lathen are missing from this list, as are current favorites such as William Tapply and Archer Mayor. These are just a few examples of great writers who are also models of consistency. None of their titles stand out as a favorite, even as their overall bodies of work would insure their inclusion on an IMBA list of 100 favorite authors.

Since the release of this list at the end of 1999, I’ve seen two significant criticisms: that as booksellers we are too much influenced by sales figures and that the list is too heavily weighted towards recent titles.

To the first charge, we plead innocent. It’s certainly true that sales matter to booksellers, and that we are aware of which titles sell most in our businesses. (IMBA even compiles a monthly bestseller list, which you can find on our website at www.mysterybooksellers.com.) It’s also true that there’s a strong correlation between our favorites and what we sell — naturally, we recommend our favorites first.

But when you look carefully at the list, you’ll see that while there might be a correlation between our favorites list and our bestsellers lists, there are also lots of titles that appear on one list but not the other. I think every mystery bookseller has an author that they’ll tell you about with a tinge of heartbreak in their voice, an author they just can’t persuade their customers to buy — it’s one of those weird intangibles about this business. I’m delighted to see some of these writers recognized here.

Especially with the classics — but even with more contemporary titles that we can already think of as “new” classics — the more important thing to remember is that we discovered many of these books before we started selling books. Indeed, these are the titles that inspired us to become mystery booksellers. If there’s any influencing going on here, it’s not in the sales figures of the books, but in the qualities of the books themselves — these books truly changed the courses of our lives, as Jane Hooper of Sherlock’s Home (Liberty, Missouri) attests in her essay on Booked to Die.

To the second charge — that the list is too heavily weighted towards recent titles — we plead guilty. We can’t deny that there are only 23 titles from the first half of the twentieth century on our list. There are, however, mitigating circumstances. First, as noted above, we were not trying to produce a list of the most historically significant mysteries. As the most knowledgeable people in the business, we certainly could do so — and it would be a different list from what you have in front of you.

We are mindful of the genre’s classics, and we treasure them. At the same time, we know that mysteries have changed over the years. There’s a unique — and timeless — pleasure to the most ingenious of the genre’s classic mystery denouements. But today’s mysteries go beyond the puzzle, and encompass a richness in style, setting and characterization that was rare in the century’s early decades. Today’s writers are responding to the demands of today’s readers, who want to see resolutions every bit as clever as those of the past but also insist that writers meet the highest literary standards. If we are more partial to these newer titles, it’s simply that we are readers of our times.

We are delighted with the many ways that talented writers have expanded the boundaries of the mystery story. At the end of one century, when you look at this list of 100 titles, you see just how strong this genre has become, and imagine how much we have to look forward to in the new century.

Jim Huang
Director, Independent Mystery Booksellers Association

Click here for more info about the 100 Favorites project and additional resources.