His LA Quartet has been credited with redefining crime fiction. It's not true. It redefined the novel, proving that only crime fiction has the moves and the grooves to cope with these dying days of America's own century, the bloody 20th. PD James by Frances Fyfield James has brought quality to the English crime-writing genre, showing that you can use the classic detection mode and make it say something. She never wrote a sloppy sentence yet.
Nobody deals better with the corrosive effect of a guilty conscience.
She's the Trollope or the Dickens of the thing. His Aurelio Zen series is totally amazing and totally believable. Zen is a marvellous creation, a cop who is corruptible without being corrupt, who in the end gives up trying to bring moral definition to a blurred society in which everyone's doing it. In his range and ingenuity, he is the Peter Ackroyd of crime fiction. A stylised world that is several moves from reality, and about as real as you can get.