Mike Phillips's top 10 crime novels

Mike Phillips's top 10 crime novels

Mike Phillips's latest book, A Shadow of Myself, is published by HarperCollins.

Mike Phillips

Wed 31 May 2000

1. A Coffin for Demetrios by Eric Ambler

Extraordinary originality for a time when the anodyne Agatha Christie was a bestseller. Still fresh as new, it is a political satire and a travelogue round eastern Europe as well as a gripping thriller.

2. Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Like walking a maze through history. Wonderful characters and an intricate, coruscatingly brilliant plot.

3. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Displays an amazing grasp of the social geography of cold war Russia, predicting the issue of organised crime in the east.

4. The Miracle Game by Josef Skvorecky

Funny, original, acute outline of Czech society. It argues the social construction of 'crime' and its role as an instrument of political power.

5. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Bitter satire about a corrupt society. There's not been anything better about terrorism and the state.

6. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Often imitated but no one has done it better. Chandler was cuter but he lacked Hammett's knowledge, passion and political bite. In his hands Hammett's satirical lambasting of California society eventually became an endlessly cliched formula.

7. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Union of gothic horror, mystery, and the leisurely detail of 19th century characterisation, along with a pre-cinematic approach to narration. Reading it again is a surprising pleasure.

8. The Way We Die Now by Charles Willeford

One of the few American crime writers to avoid propagating a rightwing agenda.This book is exceptional in focusing on the cruel exploitation and murder of migrant workers in Southern farms.

9. Murder in the Central Committee by Manuel Vazquez Montalban

Neglected Spanish master.

10. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Greene's entertainments look better now than most of his pretentious and overpraised 'serious novels'. One of the few British crime novels of the time which matched the modernist tone of the Americans, while remaining completely authentic.