I love crime stories, especially in the noir hardboiled style, like the novels of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Here in Germany the hardboiled genre is not very popular. The only one great noir writer was Jörg Fauser (1944 - 1987). You can call him the German Raymond Chandler. Fauser died under mysterious circumstances in 1987 at a highway near Munich, so he has left only less novels and short stories.
How is it in your country...Do you have great hardboiled writers? Would be nice talking about it!