AMERICANS CALL crime novels mysteries, which has always struck me as a bit misleading; some crimes are clearly not mysteries at all, and some mysteries have not the slightest element of crime in them. But it does broaden the genre, and allows one to pack a crime suitcase with at least some books that do not necessarily fit the classic mould.

My own preference in this genre is for books that are only incidentally about crime and which really focus on character and place. In both of these areas, John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Vintage, £7.99/offer £7.59) is undoubtedly one of the most vivid and engaging novels of recent years. The setting is highly atmospheric - Savannah, Georgia, a city of considerable historical and architectural interest. Such places always attract more than their fair share of colourful characters, some of whom end up disposing of one another.

Another American author on my list - although one who turned her back on the country, and then wrote about it extensively - is Patricia Highsmith. Anthony Minghella's magnificently creepy film The Talented Mr Ripley drew attention to the Ripley novels, and if a holiday suitcase has room for a large edition, then the Ripley Omnibus (Everyman's Library, £12.99/£11.69) should be packed. But Highsmith wrote many other novels worthy of attention, and Deep Water (Doubleday, £12.99/£11.69) shows her extraordinary skill in the portraying of psychopathy (or sociopathy, as it is now commonly called). This is a personality disorder that is rather more common than people think (it is statistically likely that a fair number of people reading this page will be psychopaths). Highsmith is the only author who can unsettle me to the extent of making me scared. I read this one in France, years ago, while on holiday in the Auvergne, and became quite nervous.

From the Times Archive: 1976 review of the Ripley Omnibus by Patricia Highsmith

From the Times Archive: 1958 review of Deep water by Patricia Highsmith

Fascination, rather than nervousness, is the effect produced by that most versatile novelist Julian Barnes with his wonderful Arthur & George (Vintage, £7.99/£7.59). This book is concerned with a real crime and its attribution to the wrong man. It is based on an incident involving none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and it is a most thought-provoking and grave book. It is difficult for an author to invoke a sense of sheer injustice without labouring the point; Barnes does it with both elegance and a profound moral seriousness.

Arthur & George is about an isolated set of crimes: at the other end of the spectrum, in an astonishing blaze of criminality going from the top to bottom of a whole city and a wider society is Vikram Chandra's superb epic novel, Sacred Games (Faber, £8.99/£8.54), set in Bombay. Everything is here - political corruption, family ambitions, homicides great and small, espionage, greed, history, international tensions, sex, religious and social issues.

Allow about two wide-eyed weeks to read it. Sacred Games, by the way, is set in the same city as those beautiful little classics by the former crime fiction reviewer of this newspaper, H.R.F.Keating. The Inspector Ghote books (most recently, Inspector Ghote's First Case, Alison and Busby, £19.99/£17.99) are hard to come by now, but are quite exquisite, gentle novels that should find their place on any list of good crime fiction.

Which leaves the more vintage examples of the genre to be considered. John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps (Penguin, £7.99/£7.59) is surely one of the key sources of the contemporary novel of pursuit and paranoia. This book reveals some of Buchan's unfortunate views, but it remains a classic novel of action and suspense, if that is what one wants (which I do not).

And much the same ingredients, with a dash of Jacobite history, of course, go into Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped (Penguin, £7.99/£7.59). Kidnapped is a crime novel written before the genre was identified as a genre. Its plot has been repeated time and time again: a young man discovers an old injustice; the perpetrator tries to murder him; the young man goes on the run - in spectacular scenery. Of course in the hands of Stevenson this story is told in a masterly way and is a constant source of enjoyment. Recently it was published as a graphic novel (the polite term for comic), which should bring it to the attention of new readers (or lookers).

From the Times Archive: 1886 review of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Then there is Dickens. People who condescend to this genre should be reminded of Dickens. Great Expectations (OUP, £5.99/£5.69) is a mystery, and one which, if one has the time, might be dusted down and read again. It does not really matter if one knows how things are going to end - the pleasure is in reading the book, not finishing it.

From the Times Archive: 1861 review of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

And the incomparable Barbara Pym? Perhaps a genre-stretch too far. Alas.

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of over 60 books and the creator of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series.

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