Re: RARA-AVIS: More questions about more books

From: Bob Toomey ( btoomey@javanet.com)
Date: 17 Jan 2000


Juri Nummelin wrote:

> "Anatomy of a Killer" is a masterpiece. Very cool, very tense, very
> tough. I believe it's one of the best books ever written about a stupid
> hit man.

One of the best? Actually, there's an even better one that I don't remember being mentioned here: DEAD CITY by Shane Stevens. A very interesting writer. I'd like to know more about him. He wrote an excellent first-person ghetto novel, WAY UPTOWN IN ANOTHER WORLD, that was so authentic that Stevens, who is white, was assumed to be black. His best known book, a serial killer novel, is BY REASON OF INSANITY, another work marked by a high level of autheticity -- a fictional narrative, it appears on a number of true crime lists -- and rivals Thomas Harris' RED DRAGON, which came out two years later. The books are so similar in their basic structure and approach that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Harris was influenced by Stevens. Of the two, Harris' book is more visceral, Stevens' is more convincing.

BobT

> I have "Shroud for Jesso", but haven't read it. Is it one of
> the goods? I failed to notice it in Bob's list.
>
> Juri
> jurnum@utu.fi
>
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