User talk:Hayford Peirce

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photo of William Haggard

(CC) Photo: Clayton Evans
William Haggard on the back cover of The Conspirators, 1967

a list of all the crime writers you are documenting?

Okay, Michael Gilbert, William Haggard, and who else now? Having seldom read crime fiction, I'm new to them all and it would be fun to see a more complete list of the authors whose opus you've been cataloging. Pat Palmer (talk) 01:50, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Here's what I wrote on my home page YEARS ago, and I really haven't updated it much. Except for extensive articles about Richard Condon and his novels, many of which certainly fall into the thriller mode (The Manchurian Candidate) or crime (Prizzi's Family and the three other Prizzi books). Also maybe some stuff about Victor Canning -- as you may have noted, Gilbert, Haggard, and Canning are all Brits, as is Michael Innes, whom I always MEANT to do articles about but have never had the energy. So many great Brits, so little time.... I also meant to do the mystery writers Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler, and John Dickson Carr, but never got around to it....

Awesome, Hayford! I've done my own reading of American equivalents, such as Tony Hillerman and John D. MacDonald (and there are many others--it isn't really my genre, but those are just two who caught my interest at some point). I see that there exists a brief master article on Crime fiction and that someone has already created three catalogs there: famous books, famous detectives and prominent writers. The list of prominent writers seems extensive, but the list of famous books needs attention (sorting by date, maybe--and shouldn't it include the very best example from each highly successful writer?). The list of writers would look a lot more interesting if it were reformatted to use, instead of simple links, the {{r|Article name}} kind of formatting; they would display the /Definition page contents even if no article exists yet. I will add this to my list of things to work on, but since it's your area of expertise, maybe you could also work on those catalogs too? I love what you are doing. I think it has great value.Pat Palmer (talk) 18:58, 24 September 2020 (UTC)