"Essential" Noir Novels

A couple days ago, the always fun and enlightening Paul David Brazil brought my attention to a terrific list of “essential noir” novels-- you can see it here:http://www.onlinedegree.net/20-essential-works-of-noir-fiction/
Great list. But looking over it I found that it differed dramatically from my own; after all, even though there are books we’d all agree are must-reads, the ones we find “essential” mostly comes down to subjective evaluations, yeah? That is, the books that really impacted us on a personal level as readers or writers.
And because I’m obsessive this way, I just had to come up with my own list of essential noirs, 21 of them in all (I tried to settle at 20, but one more occurred to me and I didn’t have the heart to cut any of them out)…
Here they are, in no particular order:

Double Indemnity-James M. Cain
The Postman Always Rings Twice- James M. Cain
Pop. 1280-Jim Thompson
The Killer Inside Me- Jim Thompson
The Parker series- Richard Stark
(yes, I’m cheating. It’s a series. Sue me.)
Black Friday- David Goodis
Shoot the Piano Player-David Goodis
Red Harvest-Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett
Fast One- Paul Cain
Talented Mr. Ripley- Patricia Highsmith
No Country for Old Men- Cormac McCarthy
Slammer- Alan Guthrie
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?- Horace McCoy
The Black Angel- Cornell Woolrich
Bury Me Deep- Megan Abbott
The Name of the Game is Death- Dan J. Marlowe
The Black Mass of Brother Springer- Charles Willeford
The Burnt-Orange Heresy- Charles Willeford
The Black Dahlia- James Ellroy
A Kiss Before Dying- Ira Levin
The Jack Taylor series- Ken Bruen
(Cheating again, damn my hide.)

Tell you what: Send me your list of essentials and I’ll make a future post out of them. Cool?