Sam Wiebe’s List of Out of Town (Private) Detective Novels
In January 2024, our pal Sam Wiebe posted “The Detective Out of Town” on Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine‘s blog, Something is Going to Happen, to mark the publication of his short story “The Barguzin Sable” (featuring his Vancouver private eye Dave Wakeland) in their March/April 2024 issue.
In the post, Sam muses on the predicament of an author pulling a well-established series detective out of their comfort zone and plopping them into a strange country, city or even neighborhood, and the potential risks and rewards of doing so He follows it up with an impressive list of examples that he feels got it right. Not all of Sam’s choices fall within the Shamus Game or even the harder edge of the mystery genre, but most of them do.
He concludes that “Done right, a brief trip out of town re-invigorates a series, bringing out hidden aspects of the character and the place where they function best.” It’s an excellent little piece you should check out, and well worth reading in full, including the complete list, but in the mean time, here are the private eye novels he cites as worthy of investigation.
A Brief List of Out of Town (Private) Detective Series Novels
- Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke
Featuring Dave Robicheaux. - The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
Featuring Philip Marlowe. - Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
Featuring Hercule Poirot. - Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Featuring Hercule Poirot. - Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie
Featuring Hercule Poirot. - Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Featuring Hercule Poirot. - Robert B Parker’s Blind Spot by Reed Farrel Coleman.
Featuring Jesse Stone. - J is for Judgment by Sue Grafton
Featuring Kinsey Millhone. - Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Featuring the Continental Op. - Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald
Featuring Travis McGee. - Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Featuring Easy Rawlins. - Fallout by Sara Paretsky
Featuring V.I. Warshawski. - The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker.|
Featuring Spenser.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. But do yourself a favor: go read the whole article.
