Top 100 Books | What would be your criminal top ten? | Crime

Crime pays: it is the one genre that you can rely on to get decent sales. For most aspiring writers it is the first stop on the road to get published.

It's popular. But it is also serious. There's nothing funny about serial killers, crimes of passion or revenge murders. As a result, crime writers tend to get feted in a way romance writers don't - and while often this is unfair, you can see the reason why. Crime is a serious business.

Don't forget to send us your top ten for the Big Issue's Top100Books

It is also ubiquitous. There might not be mansion house mysteries every second week a la Agatha Christie, but murders do happen at a relatively frequent rate. Our news broadcasts are full of them.

The typical murder tends to be horribly banal: a drunken argument in which someone grabs a knife. We get a lot of that in Scotland.

But others are something else. You have the domestics: fathers taking revenge on their wives in the most horrific fashion. You have the criminal: gangland hits. And you have the premeditated crimes of passion.

Anyone who thinks the extraordinary only happens between the covers of a Henning Mankell novel should reflect on the Raoul Moat case - the inquest into which is currently underway. Moat was a broken hearted body builder armed to the teeth on a rampage round sleepy Northumberland. Definitely one from the you couldn't make it up category.

I'm not a crime geek by any means - there are some embarrassing gaps in my knowledge of the genre - but here's my top ten favourite crime books of the moment. I've numbered them one to ten, but they are not in any particular order. And yes, perhaps I've been a bit loose with the genre definition.

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

Changed the rules as far as crime fiction is concerned. Brought supermarket lists to the heart of the narrative. A lot of frozen pizza.

2. Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

A glorious Gothic narrative set in the Victorian underworld.

3. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

Christie excelled herself with this one: the narrative broke all the rules of the day and still reads in a startling modern way.

4. The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey

I came across this after a recommendation. Brilliantly clever, historical detective work.

5. The Unquiet, John Connolly

Seriously dark, exciting and well written.

6. Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie

I might have picked one of several other Christies too, but this one has it all: the location, the plotting, the characters...

7. Tell No One, Harlan Coben

If you've not read it, buy it right away. Brilliant, pacy, intelligent thriller which was turned into a movie, in France oddly enough, that was just as good.

8. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

Slightly marred by the fact that I can't help think of Sean Connery as Brother William of Baskerville, but a brilliant piece of medieaval monkish detective work just the same.

9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John Le Carre

Gripping book from one of the masters.

10. LA Confidential, James Ellroy

Ellroy at his best: fantastic depiction of an America steeped in corruption.

Top 100 Books | Big Issue relaunches the list

Are these Britain’s most loved books?

     Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkein

     To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

     Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

     Lanark, Alasdair Gray

     Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

     His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

     Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke

     Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

     Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

     The Road, Cormac McCarthy

With over a million paperback sales in Britain alone, David Nicholls’ bittersweet romance One Day is one of the best-loved books of the moment. The film is out this week - which is why the book is appearing on the covers of magazines.

But what are the best-loved books of all?

The Big Issue is this week relaunching my off the cuff bid to compile a Top 100: the books you couldn’t live without.

I’ve been running the poll for the past few weeks right here. But now the magazine sold by the homeless is taking the idea to a national audience via its own websites www.bigissuescotland.com  and www.bigissue.com.

Together, we want you to list the ten books you think are the best you've ever read. The ones you believe are genuinely memorable and entertaining.

The responses I’ve received so far have been extraordinary: diverse, unusual and challenging.

But even with a small sample it was clear that a few titles were appearing again and again.

From these I have compiled a Top Ten – reproduced here. And it’s hardly a surprise that perennial favourites Lord of the Rings and To Kill A Mockingbird are neck and neck at the top.

But notice that there is no Dickens, JK Rowling or Agatha Christie – despite the fact they are the biggest selling authors of all time.

Instead, readers went for cultish books like Lanark, Gormenghast and the bleak American masterpiece The Road.

What makes the final list depends on you.

Email your top ten to top100books@bigissue.com.

There are no boundaries. All genres should be considered - just vote for the books that mean the most.www.bigissuescotland.com

Everyone who has voted so far will have their lists folded in to the new campaign. Over the next few days I'll break down the list of titles I have so far to give you some ideas, and to create talking points.

What has become obvious is that the more people who take part in this poll, the more meaningful the final list will be so please share this link with your friends on social media and encourage others to take part. We are all really looking forward to seeing what the final top 100 will look like.

Top 100 Books: what are the best selling books of all time? Tolkein? JK Rowling? Dickens? Or Agatha Christie?

Like football fans dreaming up their first eleven of all time, avid readers love compiling lists of books.

That's why we challenged readers to help us come up with a new list of the Top 100 books that are Must Reads.

We want you to tell us what books have meant the most to you. The ones you'd pass on to your kids. The ones you revisit over and over again or which stay with you for the rest of your life.

So far we've had some stonking suggestions. Many lists reflect just how eclectic modern readers are: a bit of sci fi, a few classics, some modern lit fic. Contrary to what you might expect, few people restrict themselves to one genre or time period. It is clear that avid readers are also adventurous and seek out new writers and titles all the time.

But what if the list was restricted to the best selling books of all time? What would that look like. Actually, that's pretty easy to see because a quick Google search will throw up lists based on sales. These are from Wikipedia and are, therefore, probably pretty accurate.

Top 5 best selling single volume novels of all time:

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859, over 200 million

The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkein, 1954-5, over 150 million

The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkein, 1937, over 100 million

Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, 1759-1791, over 100 million

And Then They were None, By Agatha Christie, 1939, over 100 million

No surprise to see Christie up there. Next to The Bible and Shakespeare, her books have outsold everything else by any other author, over four billion and counting - she wrote over 80 detective novels alone. Rather tragically for her and her family she signed away most if not all the rights to her work in return for a fat cheque in order to pay a large tax bill.

The others are not much of a shock either. Tolkein's bandwagon is huge and will get bigger with The Hobbit films when they are released in 2012 and 2013. Perhaps it is a surprise to see Dickens at the very top, but he was the original literary superstar and his writing was always accessible and readable enough for even a 150 years not to dent its appeal.

As to Dream of the Red Chamber... I must admit that's one I need to put on my Amazon wish list. It is one of China's four classic novels, written in the vernacular. It sounds intriguing and 100 million Cantonese speakers can't all be wrong.

Further down you find Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (80 million) and Catcher in the Rye (65 million). JK Rowling's Deathly Hallows is the top selling Harry Potter with over 44 million sales. Incredible really, for a book that's only been out four years. CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has sold 85 million since it was published in 1950.

Of course, our Top 100 Books list isn't about sales. It's about your judgement as to the value of a book: be that literary, entertainment, originality, the strength of the idea. Also it is meant to be personal and idiosyncratic. The resulting list will and should be a surprise to everyone. If it isn't we'll all have failed.

So what is your list? Leave it in the comment below and I'll integrate it with our master list. Over the next few weeks we'll be running the challenge in The Big Issue and hope to come up with a definitive Top 100. But all you need to do is think of five titles and authors, or ten if you can.

And please share the challenge with friends too. The more lists, the better the final result.