The Ones That Got Away

The Rap Sheet was first introduced to the reading public on what would’ve been Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 147th birthday (had he not died in 1930). Today, on what would have been Dashiell Hammett’s 113th birthday (he went to his grave in 1961), we introduce this archive of The Rap Sheet’s recent “one book project.” We invited more than 100 crime novelists, book critics, and bloggers from all over the English-speaking world to choose the one crime/mystery/thriller novel that they thought had been “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.”

Of the 115 novels selected, only one--Night Dogs (1996), by Kent Anderson--was nominated by three different people. Only four other titles were mentioned twice. And just five writers--Charles Willeford, P.M. Hubbard, Ross Macdonald, Colin Harrison, and Jess Walter--are represented on this tally by more than one book. For a complete list of nominated novels, click here.

What follows are all 10 parts of The Rap Sheet’s “one book project,” arranged here in the order they were posted during the week of May 21-26, 2007. All of the text and book covers are included. If you have questions or comments about this archive, shoot us an e-mail note here, or feel free to install your remarks after the posts below.