Janet Fitch Quotes

I definitely have an affection for detective fiction, and when I first read Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,' that book and its author made an enormous impression on me as a reader and a writer, and led me to other hard-boiled American writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald, among many.

What brought me to the table was Raymond Chandler and, to a lesser degree, Ross Macdonald and Dashiell Hammett. I was basically inspired to want to write like the classic private-eye writers.

I learned to write crime novels by reading people I hoped to emulate: people like James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, Joseph Wambaugh, and Sue Grafton.

I'm always interested in what classic crime writers got into when they stepped away from the genre stuff they were known for. That's why 'Mildred Pierce' is like noir without any real crime.

I like to think I'm writing in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, although I don't ape his style.

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.

I particular enjoy the crime writer, Walter Ellis Mosley. He does a series of Chandler-esque detective stories.

The tortured similes, the brooding introspection, the jaundiced view of society - nobody ever has any fun in a Ross Macdonald book.

Anyone who was tempted to draw comparisons between my father's 'Dave Robicheaux' series and my first book quickly gave up.

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.

James Cain was saddled with being called the father of hardboiled fiction. Apparently, he didn't like this saddle.

I know a lot of crime writers feel very underrated, like they're not taken seriously, and they want to be just thought of as writers rather than ghettoised as crime writers, but I love being thought of firmly as a crime writer.

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.

I don't much live my life as if I was living in a Raymond Chandler novel, which is probably a good thing.

Ross McDonald had a greater influence on me than any other writer. His style of writing, the repeated theme of the past coming out to grab somebody, that's very attractive to me as a reader and, now, as a writer.

I not only read Raymond Chandler but read all the crime fiction classics. I was hooked.

I've read a thousand private-eye novels.

My preferred genre of reading is crime thrillers - books by Harlan Coben, Jo Nesbo, David Baldacci, James Patterson, Ashwin Sanghi and a few others - and I write crime thrillers.

Walter Mosley was not the first black crime writer, nor was he the first to fuse genre conventions with larger social concerns. But when 'Devil in a Blue Dress' introduced the Los Angeles-based private detective Easy Rawlins nearly 20 years ago, it was clear the author set out to stretch the boundaries of the mystery and thriller framework.

Dorothy B. Hughes - there's a robust elegance to her writing that I keep responding to again and again. I've read her novel 'In a Lonely Place' about eight or nine times.

I think mystery writers and thriller writers - whatever genre you want to call it - are taking on some of the biggest, most interesting kind of socioeconomic issues around in a really interesting, compelling way.

I read 'Red Dragon' back in high school. I love Thomas Harris' approach to the crime thriller that crossed over into horror in a way that nobody really tapped into.