>This reminds me. I've seen several very good reviews
of a "Suburban
>Detective Mystery" series by Jon Katz, the first of
which is "Death by
>Station Wagon." The back jacket copy on the paperback
is entitled: "The
>Mean Streets of Suburbia." However, it goes on to
describe the
>protagonist as "a soft-boiled detective." I've got
this book, but never
>seem to get to it. Does anyone know it? How soft is
the PI? The cover
>painting looks very ominous, but is the book that
dark, I hope? Are
>they as good as reviews have led me to
believe?
>
Quite frankly, I think they're godawful. Having said that, I
have to go on to say that I've read all but one of the
series--but that's a nasty habit of mine that I really must
get rid of one of these days. I keep thinking
"Oh, he can't be THAT bad," so I read another book or two,
and it always turns out that he's THAT bad.
IIRC, Parker first started mining the suburbs in 1973 or so,
and it probably was pretty revolutionary back then. Katz
started somewhere around
'91, and it's safe to say he hasn't broken any new ground.
Some examples of the things his PI learns in the suburbs are:
that women have a tough dilemma in today's society, and there
are no easy answers; that you can try really hard with your
kid and do all the "right" things and s/he will still have
problems; and that material wealth doesn't buy
happiness.
As I said, not a whole lot of really new ground, and
"softboiled" is a kind description for the PI. Also, what
really pissed me off when I first read the series was that
Katz doesn't seem to have much feeling for the tradition he's
allegedly writing in. I think my first clue was when the PI
said something like "the Pinkertons could have stayed at
their desks all day if they'd had computers", and my
immediate reaction was something like
"helllooo, that's what they were trying to avoid by becoming
Pinkertons".
While I'm here, I picked up my first Pelecanos this week--THE
BIG BLOWDOWN, followed by THE SWEET FOREVER. I liked THE BIG
BLOWDOWN, and saw in it a lot of what Reed mentioned--good
friend/bad friend, redemption, et cetera. But THE SWEET
FOREVER really blew me away, no doubt in large part because I
was sixteen when it takes place and remember the music and
the clothing
(and Len Bias) fairly well. I was aware of a lot more detail
in this one
(the only thing that jumped out at me from BLOWDOWN was
constant reference to cigarette brands), but the detail in
FOREVER evoked the time perfectly for me. And the whole
redemption issue is treated totally differently--sort of a
fake ending which I thought really worked given the times
Pelecanos was writing about. I'll be reading more of him, for
sure.
Later, Vicky
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Feb 2000 EST