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Thinking of more recent than the ancient classics, I think that one of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century was Dashiell Hammett, who perfected the hard boiled detective genre. I suppose his influence was primarily in regard to dialogue.
From his works, I would recommend Red Harvest rather than the others which are perhaps more famous because Hollywood chose to make movies out of them. (It can be argued that Red Harvest was the basis of A Fistful of Dollars, which itself was based upon a Japanese samurai movie (Yojimbo?).)
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