In a comment about long novels, Doug Bassett noted
that:
"whatever else you think of [Edward S.] Aarons, you have to
admit the guy had an admirable no fuss/no muss approach to
storytelling. . ."
and goes on to ask:
"What do you guys think? . . . have you found recent hb books
to be too long? Padded?"
Very often I do. Your mention of Aarons got me to thinking of
how much more I prefer the earlier, shorter Matt Helm novels
of Aarons's Gold Medal stable-mate Donald Hamilton, to the
more recent, longer "blockbusters."
I still love Hamilton, but there was something about those
leaner, more spare early works.
Very often I also find this true of the earlier, shorter 87th
Pct novels of McBain. I still love them, but the early stuff,
each less than two hundred pages long, "blew me away" in my
sald days. I wouldn't call the more recent stuff "bloated,"
but it's certainly more leisurely,
And now that I think about it, I didn't like Richard Stark's
*Butcher's Moon* as well as the shorter Parker novels that
led up to it. I haven't read *Comeback* or
*Backflash* yet. How do they stand up?
JIM DOHERTY
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