Carrol---perhaps more appropriately "off topic" but I was looking for
your recommended well written crime
fiction. I'm  now where I wouldn't dream of stultifying my advanced age
with Smith or Marx.  Terry

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[Well -- Everyone really should reread Paradise Lost and Marx's
_Grundrisse_ at least every 3 years. :-> And Smith might surprise you.]

From the past: Chandler, John MacDonald, Sayers, Dashiell Hammet, Rex
Stout, Ross MacDonald

More or less current: Paretsky, Thomas Perry, Robert Parker*; Jan Burke,
Dick Francis*, Kathy Reichs, Dennis Lehane

*Slipping in their late books.

[Without the help of Google it would have been hard to provide this
list. Somewhere along the line the brain circuits that retrieve proper
nouns (e.g., authors) from memory got damaged. I can't recall now the
author of the books involving a (recovering) alcolholic ex-cop in NYC,
or the Louisiana cop, the 87th (?) Precinct novels (wife of one of the
central characters is deaf)]

C