Kevin writes:
>
> If we're going to get into this, here's a list I
compiled a while
> back of "defective detectives," both past and
present, cribbed from
> my site.
>
> BEN BRYN by Russell Gray (polio victim, unable to
walk)
In the interest of PI correctness, let me fill in the facts
of Bryn: he IS able to walk. Russell Gray's (B. Fischer's)
standard paragraph on him goes as follows:
For
twenty years of his life those legs had been useless
appendages
as the result of infantile paralysis. His youth
had
consisted of pushing himself about on a wheeled
platform
and
selling newspapers and shoelaces. That had placed
strength
in
his shoulders and hands and iron in his soul; and when
a
series
of exercises he had evolved had eventually developed
his
legs to normal, that sterngth and that iron had made
him
the
most feared crimnal investigator in the state.("Prey for
the
Creeping
Death")
(I wonder if there was a Charles Atlas ad near these
stories?)
So Ben Bryn becomes a hunk, his only defect being a shortened
height (5'2") that makes him self-conscious around taller,
glamorous women. What I DO notice in the Bryn stories,
however, is the tendency of the murderers to make their
victims horribly defective or maimed--by being ripped apart
or slowly burned by acid.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 01 Feb 2000 EST