Please help me find some great crime books

[Greatalexssander]

Hi everyone, I was wondering if you could recommend me some of your favorite novels on these topics: gangs, gang life, drug dealing, drug empires, snitches/moles, crime rings, criminal minds, CON ARTISTS and heists, mafia.

Non fiction or fiction, it's all gravy.

I'm really excited to see what the forum members can come up with!

Thank you

[Penforhire]

Charlie Huston rises near the top for me in "crime" novels. Check out his Hank Thompson trilogy.

[edbro]

That's a pretty wide open genre.

Noir crime:
Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)
Jim Thompson

Humorous crime:
Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark)

True crime:
Ann Rule
Decision Points by George W. Bush

Classic crime:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Contemporary:
Way too many to list but I like Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, Robert Crais and James Lee Burke

[Pookeysgirl]

Greg Isles - The Devil's Punchbowl Warning: a lot of graphic, disturbing violence

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by edbro

True crime:
Ann Rule
Decision Points by George W. Bush

On the other hand, thats true

[lila55]

"The Queen of the South" by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

From Amazon:
Readers of Pérez-Reverte's sixth thriller won't be able to turn the pages fast enough: the author of The Club Dumas, The Seville Communion and other literary adventure novels now tackles the gritty world of drug trafficking in Mexico, southern Spain and Morocco, offering a frightening, fascinating look at the international business of transporting cocaine and hashish as well as a portrait of a smart, fast, daring and lucky woman, Teresa Mendoza. As the novel opens, Teresa's phone rings. She doesn't have to answer it: the phone is a special one given to her by her boyfriend, drug runner and expert Cessna pilot Güero Dávila. He has warned her that if a call ever came, it meant he was dead, and that she had to run for her own life. On the lam, Teresa leaves Mexico for Morocco, where she keeps a low profile transporting drug shipments with her new lover. But after a terrible accident and a brief stint in prison, Teresa's on her own again. She manages to find her way, but Teresa is no mere survivor: gaining knowledge in every endeavor she becomes involved in and using her own head for numbers and brilliant intuition, she eventually winds up heading one of the biggest drug traffic rings in the Mediterranean. Spanning 12 years and introducing a host of intriguing, scary characters, from Teresa's drug-addicted prison comrade to her former assassin turned bodyguard, the novel tells the gripping tale of "a woman thriving in a world of dangerous men."

"Gomorrah" by Roberto Saviano

From Amazon:
Saviano has created a perfectly realized, morally compelling journey through the brutal world of contemporary Italian mob life in this ceaselessly violent tale of the Camorra, a network of thugs, exploiters and killers who run Naples and the surrounding countryside. Armed with a police band radio, Saviano visits one crime scene after another, recording the final words and circumstances of the dying and dead. The murders described are savage, cruel and senseless: The head... hadn't been cut off with a hatchet, a clean blow, but with a metal grinder: the kind of circular saw welders use to polish soldering. The worst possible tool, and thus the most obvious choice. Jewiss's translation of Saviano's intense prose flows beautifully from the pestilence and degradation of everyday life in the teeming Neapolitan slums to the futile efforts of the police to control the rich, organic chaos that is the only way the Camorra know how to live. A stunning achievement, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the state of contemporary Europe.

[Libbyfh]

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell... the book has pretty much everything you mentioned except Mafia...

Savages by Don Winslow: similar territory

The Lock Artist: by Steve Hamilton: A young master lock picker... great read!

[astrangerhere]

More classic Noir: Raymond Chandler is a MUST. You might also want to look at things like James Ellroy's LA Quartet or the original Mario Puzo works.

[SensualPoet]

Have a peek here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...87&postcount=1

[captkjaneway]

If you like gangland fiction sprinkled with a little fact then I found The Long Firm a nice book based loosely around the Kray Twins. The author Jake Arnott has a number of these sort-of-fiction books to his name and is a good read IMHO.

[doreenjoy]

There are two great hardboiled crime novels here on MR by Clifton Adams: "Never Say No to a Killer" and "Death's Sweet Song."

For modern stories, try Lisa Scottoline.

[JoelArnold]

The Accountant's Story by Roberto Escobar is a pretty fascinating look at Pablo Escobar's life of crime as told by his brother (who was, as the title implies, Pablo's accountant.)

[Pablo]

For mafia, Mario Puzo is the master.

The Godfather
The Sicilian
The Last Don
Omertá

I am surprised nobody mencioned him already - maybe everybody is taking him for granted....

Originally Posted by lila55

"The Queen of the South" by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

I second this one, one of his best.

[skydiamond]

I second Pablo - Puzzo is simply classics - I'm not tired of reading him again which is quite rare with books nowadays...

"For mafia, Mario Puzo is the master.

The Godfather
The Sicilian
The Last Don
Omertá

I am surprised nobody mencioned him already - maybe everybody is taking him for granted...."

also, I am a huge Harlan Coben fan - I've read all of his books and have for the most part LOVED them. They can catch you right from the first page, especially Myron Bolitar series.

[Catlady]

For noir, Megan Abbott: Die a Little, The Song Is You, Queenpin, and Bury Me Deep.

Two of these novels are based on real-life cases: The Song Is You about the Jean Spangler disappearance in Hollywood in 1949 (still unsolved), and Bury Me Deep about the Winnie Ruth Judd "Trunk Murderess" case.