The Book You Have to Read

Over the last year, our sister publication, the award-winning crime fiction-dedicated Rap Sheet, has been compiling a list of the Books You Have to Read. That weekly feature had a birthday today. Editor J. Kingston Pierce says, “As hard as this is for me to believe, it was a year ago that The Rap Sheet inaugurated its ‘Books You Have to Read’ series.” As Pierce points out, “Rap Sheet contributors and a more substantial number of published authors have produced 51 posts about must-read crime novels, many of those no longer in print.”

The list is wicked impressive, including contributions from authors Stephen Booth, Gary Phillips, Jason Starr, Simon Wood, Linwood Barclay, Cara Black, Max Allan Collins, Louise Ure and 42 others about books both well-known and obscure. You can find the complete list here.