Good Vintage Reads...

[RetroMom]

Can anyone recommend some good vintage reading?

I am partial to mysteries/suspense and have read the usual Agatha Christie. I have also read Patricia Wentworth's "Miss Silver" ( very much like Miss Marple) and M.M. Kaye's books. I have also read most of Erle Stanley Gardner as well.

Any ideas would be very appreciated!

 

["Doc" Devereux]

Let me put it this way....



Personally, I like the books written up until The Saint Steps In, but that's just my taste. There are plenty to read, and Charteris writes a cracking tale.

 

[Hannigan Reilly]

Any mysteries- Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, etc. And I love juvenile fiction of the golden era, the early Hardy Boys, sports pulp novels about high school boys and girls learning life lessons from sports and competition. Lots of good vibes from those books!

 

[mysterygal]

I love Agatha Christie books...especially the one's with Hercule Peirot

 

[RetroMom]

I love Poirot too! I watch the re-runs of the A&E series on the Biography channel on Tuesdays!

I forgot about the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mysteries, I really used to love those. I have to raid the kids bookshelves now......

 

[mysterygal]

I really don't think Raymond Chandler would be considered 'vintage', but, he has some great books out if you're into mysteries. The one's I've really liked so far is, 'Farewell, my Lovely", 'The Big Sleep', and 'The Long Goodbye'

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ellery Queen's mysteries are a lot of fun -- great period flavor in the earlier books, and they're consciously set up as a test of wits for the reader: there's always a pause before the final chapter challenging you to solve the mystery yourself. (I've read 'em all, and never got the right answer!)

 

[shindeco]

I love vintage mysteries. The "big names" are still being published, of course. If you like Agatha Christie, check out Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L. Sayers, if you haven't already. I would also suggest Stuart Palmer's Hildegarde Withers series.

Some lesser known authors I've found and liked are Baynard Kendrick who wrote a series with a blind detective (Duncan Maclain); Craig Rice; and Kelly Roos. There are a lot of good writers who are now unknown. Haunt the second hand bookshops. You never know what you'll find.


Brainstorming Golden age detectives:

Nero Wolfe (by Rex Stout), Ellery Queen (by Ellery Queen), Philo Vance (by S S van Dine), Pam and Jerry North (by Richard and Frances Lockridge), Michael Shane (by Brett Halliday); Sir Henry Merrivale (by Carter Dickson); Gervase Fen (by Edmund Crispin), Albert Campion (by Margery Allingham)

OK, I'm going to stop now but thanks for the opportunity to browse through my bookshelves!!

 

[shindeco]

Oh, oh!! Not vintage but period!

Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple series. A very well researched and equally well written series set in the 'twenties. Lots of fun and easy to find.

http://www.geocities.com/caroladunn/DaisyDalrympleMysteries.html

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

I have a two-volume hardcover set of Chandler from Amazon. It has The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window; The Lady in the Lake and several others as well as some short stories and other writings. Just the thing for the foggy "June Gloom" that's beginning to settle over Los Angeles.

 

[RetroMom]

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions!

 

[silhouette53]

[/URL]

Personally, I like the books written up until The Saint Steps In, but that's just my taste. There are plenty to read, and Charteris writes a cracking tale.

ABSOLUTELY !!!!!!!!

 

[MissQueenie]

Well, my suggestions aren’t really mystery or suspense novels, but just a smattering of some of the vintage authors cluttering my shelves.

Graham Greene: I like pretty much everything I’ve read by him. I’d suggest starting with The Quiet American or The End of the Affair, both of which are evocative and moving. His prose is beautiful, and his stories are dark, haunting, and unforgettable. He was a fascinating man, one who struggled with his own darkness his whole life, and I highly recommend Norman Sherry’s excellent 3-part biography. He was quite handsome as a young man, too.

Fitzgerald: My favorite for short stories – my favorite collection is “Flappers and Philosophers” which contains a number of dark tales and one very bright one. I found “Tender Is The Night” beautiful to read but unsatisfying – I was left aggravated at the end, but sometimes life, like fiction, is like that. If you are looking for an intimate, touching, and tragic love story, read “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda” – it is a collection of love letters between F. Scott and Zelda from their earliest courtship to their deathbeds, and the edition I have contains photographs and facsimiles of many of the original letters and telegraphs. I appreciated their letters as it let me draw my own conclusions about their relationship and their personalities without the constant editorializing that I despise in their popular biographies.

Hemmingway: I dislike his work enough not to have bothered with much of it, but many appreciate his blunt-end approach to storytelling and sparse prose. “A Moveable Feast” is an interesting (and very colored) memoir of Hemmingway’s time in Paris as part of the “Lost Generation” – in which he starves, lives in a hovel, and rubs elbows with literary greats while drinking too much.

Gabriel Garcia-Marquez: While not a "vintage" author, he does write the most amazing stories. "Love in the Time of Cholera" is my favorite, and chronicles a life-long love and obsession through the early parts of the 20th century.

I’m on the lookout for good books to take with me on a long trip, and so far I’ve got these two on my “MUST READ” list:

The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Scoop – Evelyn Waugh

More suggestions and reviews would be very welcome!

 

[Doctor Strange]

I never miss a chance to plug my favorite nearly forgotten great American author of the 20s-30s - Sinclair Lewis!

Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth, It Can't Happen Here... These are all wonderful books, and even his lesser-known books (like Work of Art, Ann Vickers, Cass Timberlane, and Kingsblood Royal) are good reads. Very much of their time, but still applicable to today. As long as there's hypocrisy, bigotry, miplaced enthusiasm, and folks talking your ear off without a thought in their heads, Lewis's books will remain essential!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ah! Always good to know there's other Sinclair Lewis fans out there. I read most of his work in high school, and like to revisit it from time to time. "It Can't Happen Here" is probably my favorite -- one of those books you just can't put down.

 

[Pilgrim]

Two that are hard to beat:

Leslie Charteris - The Saint is a high-water mark for class and action in one book. Absolutely deilghtful stuff, unlike the recent movie. Rog3er Moore did a much better job on TV, driving his Volvo 1800 series sports car.

Mickey Spillane - Any of the Mike Hammer novels define tough US detective novels. No one (even Hammett) has done it better. Spillane has a stamp on his own style.

 

[Story]

Can anyone recommend some good vintage reading?

Any ideas would be very appreciated!

Depending on how much you appreciate irony, try Sinclair Lewis' IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE. It was written in 1935.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451525825/102-6454015-3436116?v=glance&n=283155

 

[The Wolf]

how about something different.

I would recommend some Shadows, Doc Savages or The Phantom Detective.
I recommend "Death in Silver" or "Brand of the Werewolf" as interesting Doc Savage mysteries you should try.

Sincerely,
Doc Wolf

 

[Viola]

Gee, looks like I'm not a moment too soon - we really have a thread on period books without any mention of Damon Runyon and Dashell Hammett?

I like kids detective stories as much as anybody, (incidentally, does anyone but me remember the Ken Holt mysteries?...) but c'mon, The Thin Man is a classic! And Runyon... just his use of language is amazing. Not the plots, especially, but the period slang is mind-blowing.

 

[magneto]

Gee, looks like I'm not a moment too soon - we really have a thread on period books without any mention of Damon Runyon and Dashell Hammett?
...

For 'period language', too, Ring Lardner's short stories!
(Dare I mention H.L Mencken..the autobiographical works, Newspaper Days etc are a good place to start...you'll never look at Baltimore (or the U.S.A. the same way again).
Speaking of U.S.A., John Dos Passos (1919, Manhattan Transfer...) another forgotten gem.