It was the talented Mr Ripley who started this blog off. No, I haven’t bumped him off and taken over his blog, and at this moment sitting here trying to write in the manner of Tom, practicing his inflections and Americanisms. How ironic that would be.
But I did pick up the book over Christmas and enjoyed it, though inevitably the pictures in my head were based largely on the film, Matt Damon’s diffident and weird Tom Ripley.
The aloofly charming but doomed Jude Law's trustafarian playboy Dickie Greenleaf
And the merely vacuous in the film, but vacuous and annoying in the book Paltrow’s Marge Sherwood.
It’s a classic crime book and I began to wonder how classic is it? Is there a list out there? The top one hundred crime novels? And yes there is, surprise, surprise on Wikipedia @.
So the purpose of this blog is to work my way through the two lists; one American and one British. Why? Well it’s been nagging at me, like a half-understood clue, that I want to write a crime novel, and maybe it’s a prevarication but I thought I’ll immerse myself in the world of crime. Get into the guts of the genre and so by some sort of osmosis it might just seep into me.
So starting at the bottom, I'm working my way up trying to enjoy the stories, though I don’t expect to like every book but I’ll keep a sharp eye out for any clues about crime writing.
I am surprised about some of the books on the list that I might not have straightaway classed as a crime book such as: Erskine Childer's Riddle of the Sands; a war story, unless it's a war crime story), the Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon; a spy story very much like the Smiley books on the list by John le Carré. But it all seems to be grist to the mill.
