Wednesday, June 9: Tune It Or Die!
TITLE FIGHT
by Rob Lopresti
Simple question: What makes a great mystery title?
It ought to catch the eye, intrigue the mind. It should also have some telling connection to the plot of the story. Some authors seem to have an endless supply of great titles. Some of my favorite authors never come up with a single one that rings my chimes.
Here are a few that work for me, with some comments about why.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. The ultimate hardboiled title, leading to thousands of imitations with Bigs and metaphors for death.
The Goodbye Look by Ross MacDonald. See above.
I, The Jury by Mickey Spillaine.
The Big Boat To Byebye by Ellis Weiner. You know it’s a comic take on hardboiled, right? Exactly.
The Last Camel Died At Noon by Elizabeth Peters. Right away you know this isn’t a traditional mystery, but an adventure story. It takes place in the desert, and things ain’t gonna go so well. Another great, very different Peter title: Naked Once More.
A Bad Day For Sorry by Sophie Littlefield. I know nothing about this book except it was nominated for Best First Mystery this year, and has both a great title and cover.
The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover by Kinky Friedman. If you slept through high school English, this is a reference to T.S. Eliot’s most famous poem. Kinky is a special case. It is not uncommon for his titles to be better than the books they adorn. There’s also Armadillos and Old Lace, and Elvis, Jesus, and Coca-Cola (the three English words that are known everywhere on earth.)
Morons and Madmen by Earl Emerson. In some ways Earl is the opposite of Kinky. There is a positive correlation between the quality of the title and the quality of the book. Other favorites: Help Wanted: Orphans Preferred, The Dead Horse Paint Company, and Going Crazy In Public.
When The Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block. Block picks great hardboiled titles for the Matt Scudder series: A Stab in the Dark, Long Line of Dead Men, etc. But this novel is about a recovering alcoholic detective remembering a case from his drinking days. What could be a better title than this line from Dave Van Ronk’s salute to barroom life, “Final Call?”
Everybody Smokes In Hell by John Ridley. A hate letter to L.A. with one of the funniest, nastiest, opening scenes I have ever run across.
They Don’t Play Stickball in Milwaukee by Reed Farrell Coleman.
Dancehall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman.
The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout.
Greed & Stuff by Jay Russell.
Voodoo, Ltd. by Ross Thomas. Artie Wu and Quincy Durant, two of Thomas’s series characters, are troubleshooters of a kind. Their company is called Wudu, Ltd. but their client mispronounces it, mostly to annoy them. And to tell us that they will work their very non-supernatural magic on the case of a movie star accused of murder.
Who The Hell Is Wanda Fuca? by G.M. Ford. Maybe you have to live in the Pacific Northwest to think this is a great title. The Strait of Juan De Fuca separates the Olympic Peninsula from Vancouver Island. The quirky Seattle homeless people (like the one who asks the title question) separate Ford’s novels from the average P.I. novel.
And a few from a special category…
They each started a series.
Friday The Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman.
A Is For Alibi, by Sue Grafton.
One For The Money, by Janet Evanovich.
Over to you…
What are your favorite mystery novel titles?
The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Gutter and the Grave, The Lady in the Lake, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By, A Study in Scarlet, are some of my favourites.
A Bad Day For Sorry — that’s a great title and cover. I don’t think it needed the qualifier: “A Crime Novel”. That much one could be sure of.
Some of my favorite Agatha Christie titles: Sad Cypress, Appointment with Death, Evil under the Sun, Postern of Fate, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Death Comes as the End, Ordeal by Innocence, Towards Zero, Sparkling Cyanide, Endless Night.
John Dickson Carr had some great titles. A couple of late examples: THE HOUSE AT SATAN’S ELBOW and PANIC IN BOX C.
Jeff Cohen has a book with a title I love: A Farewell to Legs.
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN — how could you not read it after that title? We’re all so curious.
I love titles with double meanings and “Beyond The Grave” by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini is also a huge clue to the mystery. “The Mystery of the Screaming Clock” by Robert Arthur (you want to find out what the heck that IS don’t you?). “The House Without a Key” by Earl Derr Biggers is perfectly in tone for the much-maligned Charlie Chan. “The April Robin Murders” by Craig Rice and Ed McBain. Mary Daheim’s “A Streetcar Named Expire” made me laugh when I saw it on the bookshelf in the store. And, (not a mystery but I couldn’t resist), “Who’s Afraid Of Beowulf?” by Tom Holt. Oh, and Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” takes its title from a line in Hamlet!
My favorites are Money Shot by Christa Faust, A Taste of Ashes by Howard Browne, and Ngaio Marsh’s Spinsters in Jeopardy. Faust’s and Browne’s novels are as good as their titles; Marsh’s is, alas, one of her weaker books.
I still like Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man, by Ed McBain.
One thing I always found interesting about the title The Last Camel Died at Noon: I read a Ken Follett novel in the early 80s (The Key to Rebecca) whose very first line was “The last camel collapsed at noon.” Seriously.
I think Ms. Peters might be a Follett fan.
How could I forget Let’s Hear It For The Deaf Man? And A Study In Scarlet reminded me of The Sign Of The Four.
Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball by Scott Spencer.