A dud Listicle
You see them everywhere: "listicles", or "articles" which consist of the Top 10 this or 24 incredible pictures... They exist to carry ads. Content is usually negligible.
There's a site called Ranker, which has a list of the top crime writers. Here's a sample, and adjacent to their names is a three-title selection of their works, no doubt to remind you:
4: Raymond Chandler: Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train, The Big Sleep
5: Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest, Watch on the Rhine
8: Elmore Leonard: 3.10 to Yuma, Joe Kid, Tall T
Double Indemnity by James M Cain; Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith but movie screenplays by Chandler and other writers too.
The Watch on the Rhine: a screenplay by Hammett, but not his book. And a WW2 drama with Gestapo etc.
And for Elmore Leonard's 3 titles, they're westerns. No mention of Get Shorty, Glitz, Gold Coast, etc etc, which are crime novels.
Oh, and Grisham is listed with 3 titles: The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Firm.
Wow! He wrote two different books called The Firm?
The public is invited to vote on these for ranking purposes. I vote Ranker as way, way down the rank of listicle sites.
(Incidentally, did you know that Chandler made a very brief, uncredited appearance as a extra in Double Indemnity? Just a second or so; he's sitting in a chair reading a newspaper when Fred MacMurray strides past.)
There, I feel better now.
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