But Josh's interest could perhaps start a thread on best
send-ups of the genre?
In the print area, I like the Spillane self-parody in
"Hard-Boiled."
[Least I thought it was parody.]
Gahan Wilson, the Playboy cartoonist, did a nice hard-boiled
cum fantasy,
in both text and cartoons, in "Eddy Deco's Last Caper." It
was great fun.
In 1985, David Godine published a nice twist-a-plot style
book by Robert
DiChiara, called "Hard-Boiled," featuring three cases. As has
to happen,
to keep the game fun (since problem-solving rarely holds
interest),
DiChiara revs up the language for parodic effects:
"You'd like to get ahold of the mug what said patience was
a
virtue. Ace sinks all his five available knuckles into your
face, and your
head twists and swims. You see about three Aces, which beats
easy anything
you've seen at the poker table..."
Finally, there's the Pronzini collection of worst pulp
passages, called
"Gun in Cheek." I recommend it.
Perhaps reading parody is not to everyone's taste, but I find
a little
humor helps me discriminate among the contenders in the piles
of the
unread.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.