 |
| Edgar Wallace |
 |
| Gérard de Villiers |
Judging by my headline, I must be auditioning for the job
of headline writer for The Huffington Post.
Yes, such a list is a stretch and certainly the results are debatable
for many reasons. There are many
influential crime writers missing from this list — Cain, Thompson, Hammett,
Chandler and all the Mac and McDonalds, not to mention Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
himself. True, but this not a list of best, but a list of the bestsellers. And how, in this case, is a crime writer defined? I did my subjective best with a list of best
selling authors of fiction on Wikipedia.
The link and some additional notes are below.
_by_Erling_Mandelmann.jpg) |
| Frédéric Dard |
There were many surprises here. Apparently a little too Euro-centric, I wasn’t at all
familiar with a few of the Japanese novelists on the list. There were some
other surprises. Who is Edgar Wallace? I
Googled. He’s real. Some seemed too young to be in the running. For a fellow not yet 60, John Grisham’s
appearance is pretty impressive. One reason for his success, and others, I
suspect, is translations. Grisham’s
books have been translated into 42 languages. Young as Grisham is, compared to the old and
the dead on this list, Patricia Cornwell is 58, even younger. David Baldacci is
54, and Dan Brown is only 50.
The key to this list is the total number of books sold. Each
of the writers listed below has sold at least 100 million books. Dame Agatha Christie has sold 4 billion.
Here’s the list:
1 Agatha
Christie
2 Georges Simenon
3 Sidney Sheldon
4 Erle Stanley Gardner
5 Jirõ Akagawa
6 Edgar Wallace
7 Robert Ludlum
8 James Patterson
9 Frédéric Dard
10 Jeffrey Archer
11 John Grisham
12 Irving Wallace
13 Mickey Spillane
14 Kyotaro Nishimura
15 Dan Brown
16 Arthur Hailey
17 Gérard de Villiers
18 Michael Crichton
19 Ken Follett
20 David Baldacci
21 Evan Hunter
22 Robin Cook
23 Ian Fleming
24 Rex Stout
25 John Creasey
26 Yasuo Uchida
27 Seiichi Morimura
28 Mary Higgins Clark
29 Patricia Cornwell
30 Tom
Clancy
There are writers who straddle genres and questions about
how to define crime fiction. I didn’t
include “horror,” for example. Certainly
Stephen King would have been high on the list.
Do Alistair MacLean and Clive Cussler belong in this category? Perhaps.
How about the James Patterson factory? What
about Vampire fiction? Wikipedia, which has listed them by number of books
sold, also notes that Jack Higgins would have likely made the list but sales
records are incomplete. To see the list from which this sublist was was culled,
go here.
Because there is an obvious level of subjectivity in
defining qualifications for this compilation, your comments are especially
welcome.
2 comments:
Fascinating list! Who knew the Japanese were so fond of the genre? Aooarently they are to see so many Japanese authors on the list. And so few have found their way into English. Wonder what we're missing?
Thanks Teri. I agree. I'm on my second mysteryi/noir by Fuminori Nakamura. I'm impressed, especially by his first, The Thief.
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