The best black novels by countries

The black genre has gone from being considered a subgenre of the more traditional detective novel to evolve as a wayward student determined to mix everything to stand out more. The resulting bastard genre currently ends up combining suspense, black, police, mystery or even gore (at least in terms of theatricality and recreation of the crime of the moment)

And perhaps it is all a matter of necessity, of reinventing itself to continue grabbing the best-selling positions in world literature. From the initial and initiatory enigmas of the genre of the hand of Conan Doyle, or inspiration more in the style of Agatha Christie, even crime as pathology, animosity or twisted artistic will.

Plot twists and narrative resources of all kinds to maintain psychological tension, a whole display of imagination so that a multitude of authors focused on this genre continue to assault bookstores around the world.

Because every country worth its salt has its own plethora of crime novel writers. And it occurs to me that we can meet the best authors and their best works grouping them by country, with their own cultural debt of the genre and their new narrative horizons, with their respective links for more details about their work ...

Best Nordic crime novels

To speak of the current black genre as a great concentrator of trends around crime is to speak of the Nordic crime novel as a great reference.

The great precursor of the genre in this grouping of Scandinavian countries is, for me, Henning Mankell. It is true that the particular dark setting of these northern countries, together with the longer periods of cold, offer a perfect setting that tunes in with the darkness of the criminal mind.

And around this narrative tourism of the sinister, many current young writers from Norway, Sweden, Finland or Denmark move like fish in water, a stormy water of the North, Baltic or Norwegian seas where humanity freezes and the myths of the inhospitable North awaken.

Authors like Norwegian Jo nesbo, who from the hand of his researcher Harry Hole even dares with an adaptation of Hamlet. The ill-fated Stieg Larsson himself, the initiator of the Millenium saga, who inserted the androgynous Lisbeth Salander into our imagination ... Karin Fossum, the Norwegian queen of crime, always capable of unpredictable turns and magnetic proposals.

The most exotic of them all is Icelandic Arnaldur Indridason, a writer of maximum intensity, in tune with his most extreme northern origin. Any of these authors and many others such as the former politician Anne holt or the very popular ones Camilla Lackberg y asa larsson they provide that extensive panorama fertile in creativity amid the solitude of the cold. A synthetic relationship of nordic crime novel writers that treasures the most recognized and read of our present time. Ah! And we can't forget either Jussi Adler-Olsen with your department Q ...

Best Spanish crime novels

Since this blog is a space about literature made in Spain, what less than to recover the most outstanding authors of the native black genre after the great Scandinavian factory.

In Spain the crime novel was born very early with a political and social connotation, with a critical point and an assumption of the human soul as a corruptible element when mixed with power. To start talking about the Spanish crime novel writers you have to go back to Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the great initial engine with its protagonist the detective Pepe Carvalho, immediately following with Gonzalez Ledesma, who even delved deeper into a disenchanted crime novel, fatalistic but at the same time captivating.

Two deceased authors whose seed ended up germinating in many other current authors. It is important to highlight the role of narrators as Alicia Gimenez Bartlett, Dolores Redondo or even Eva Garcia Saenz y Maria Oruña. With them came Petra Delicado in the first place and a reconversion of the noir genre combined with thriller and mystery in the following cases, through essential sagas.

Of course, we cannot forget the versatile Lorenzo Silva, the great current bastion of the genre in our country and many other younger ones like Victor of the Tree that synthesizes the black with an incomparable narrative depth, or Javier Castillo that takes us into thrillers of a prodigious vividness.

Many other Spanish authors approach the genre with the necessary freshness that incorporations and editorial discoveries bring. So the list could always be expanded ...

WHAT DO YOU TELL ME ABOUT THESE TEACHERS OF THE SPANISH BLACK GENDER? CLICK ON THEM IF YOU HAVE DOUBTS

Best French crime novels

French noir enjoys a profuse and diverse number of authors who manage to cross its borders.

Undoubtedly a group of great creators circumscribed to this magical genre prone to the combination of genres, to the social portrait of the dark and to creativity ... You just have to see the great Fred Vargas, a writer faithful to the principles of the early detective genre who is able to survive and stand out among the diversification of the black and who has obtained great recognition worldwide. OR Pierre Lemaitre, the noir of the everyday. Without forgetting Sandrine Destombes with that elegance of the plots that still evoke the police ...

They are not far behind Franck thilliez, the visible head of the current French neopolar (a subgenre already generated in the 70s), and that has redirected the genre to the most macabre among the macabre, although closely followed by the mighty Maxim Chattam in his recent change of narrative register. For his part Bernard minier it also participates in the macabre but always providing a telluric touch, a framework with the very special scenography ... Without a doubt these are for me the best examples of French crime novel writers figure.

WHO ARE THESE FRENCH BLACK NOVEL WRITERS? DISCOVER IT BY CLICKING ON THEM

Best Italian crime novels

Italy shares with Spain a Mediterranean touch in the generality of the black work. The light of this part of the world serves the cause of the darkness of the genre thanks to that natural contradiction of the human soul, the play of light and shadow, the pettiness of appearances, the corruption under the guise of moral perfection, to perversion and crime with the natural calm of a Mediterranean sea almost always calm ...

Although the term spaghetti crime sounds a bit derogatory, it really is a very sold genre and is currently booming all over the world. Andrea Camilleri It is the inexhaustible benchmark, but after it they already achieve similar sales figures. I mean Antonio Manzini, with his balanced proposal between macabre and police black, or Luca D'Andrea and its total explosion to the first published novel: The substance of evil.

Without forgetting, of course sandrone dazieri, also overturned between black and police, but dressing the whole with great mysteries ... With these four Italian crime novel writers It would be enough to read for months, but looking back at the noir genre of the Italian peninsula, the nineties are also an important fishing ground for great authors such as Massimo Carlotto or Carlo Lucarelli ...

WHO ARE THESE ITALIAN BLACK NOVEL WRITERS? DISCOVER IT BY CLICKING ON THEM

Best German Crime Novels

The German genre noir features in the personification of Charlotte Link one of the great pillars of the most vigorous and demanded European black genre. Of course, in the Teutonic country they do not seem to be lavishing on large exporters of the black genre to the rest of the world. So it's easy to focus your shot on the highlights.

In the case of Charlotte Link, is about a writer whose trick lies in the combination of all that sum of frameworks as shared subgenres within the plot. The mystery, the police, the blatantly black ...

But in addition to the great narrator we also find Sebastian Fitzek like a thriller narrator with that dark component around psychological fear, the dark recesses of the soul. The ill-fated Jakob arjouni It was also a powerful voice that enlivened a German black genre not as profuse as other European countries but consistent through its greatest current figures. Without forgetting powerful cases like Nele Neuhaus with his sinister Snow White and his wolves ...

As a particular case, we must cite Jean Luc Bannalec, pseudonym of Jörg Bong. This German writer disseminates his work according to genres and locations, having Jean-Luc as his noir stronghold as his alter ego.

WHO ARE THESE GERMAN BLACK NOVEL WRITERS? DISCOVER IT BY CLICKING ON THEM

Best British crime novels

We approach the different countries of some British islands made the cradle of the police genre and with I do everything for their similar scenery. They were born there Arthur Connan Doyle o Agatha Christie, in addition to a Alfred Hitchcock that brought to the big screen scripts that epitomized the best of that dark legacy of narrative crime Only that today the explosion of narrators with a British designation of origin (as I say by extension for England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales) is not so marked as in other countries or European areas.

However, it is worth mentioning ian rankin and his international agent John Rebus oa John connolly with his capacity for surprise in novels and stories, as well as Ann Cleeves with its recent leap to Spanish bookstores, to confirm that the black genre is in good health, awaiting new bastions such as the particular Tana french that they continue to configure themselves as British crime novel writers, a reference to consider.

And my writers of crime fiction from the British Isles are…. (Click on the images if you have doubts)

Best American Crime Novels

If we jump the pond, in the very extensive United States we also find great authors who, although they have not drank directly from the great classics of the cradle of the genre that is Europe, did know how to import the basic notions and explore so many new ramifications of the black genre , starting with his hard boiled with that masterful ability to make any product or creative field his own and relaunch from there a black genre that ended up becoming a new narrative cradle.

Since the very Edgar Allan Poe probing the police in his narrative that combined the gothic with the terror, many other past and present authors have known how to exploit that perspective of the criminal as the maximum exponent of violence, psychopathy, the dark side of the human being.

We would start the journey with the great Dashiell hammett, With the help of Raymond ChandlerFollowed by Patricia Highsmith and revived by current established authors such as James Ellroy, the always surprising Michael connelly or the cinematographic Dennis Lehane.

A diverse selection of authors who approached that black man connected with the underground mechanism of the world and who ended up presenting crime as an authentic theater of death. The American crime novel writers they are already a great host of prolific authors.

The greats of noir made in the USA. Click on them to get closer to their works.

Logically, many other countries offer their particular quarry of narrators of the black, but these countries are the most emblematic for quantity and quality. Even in each of the countries mentioned, there are many other authors missing, it's all a matter of taste ...

If we extend ourselves to the whole world, we would not have life for so much reading. So I invite you to choose any of the aforementioned authors, grouped this time by their respective countries but are simply enjoyed as narrators of the most varied black genre, without any other labeling.