Mark S:
When I wrote
>
> "It's the American way: all flash and no thinking
allowed."
I was thinking of the big Silence of the Lambs- type books. I
was indicting the authors who don't feel they have to work to
write books that hang together logically. Instead their
criminals muder purely because they are psycopaths. They
don't have reasons for their actions that can be deduced.
Their motivation never has to make any kind of sense. An
author just has to create a monster villain who has near
superhuman physical and mental powers because, going to 'pay
by weight', the book has to be at least 400 pages. so the
criminal can easly outwit the protagonist while the suspense
builds as he is killing or maiming those close to the
protagonist as well as strangers.
It seems these books are the big bestsellers made into
eagerly awaited movies while the hard boiled books that we
love are largely ignored by the mainstream. As well as hard
boiled I think this type book is endemic to America as are
serial killers. I think this type of book is written for the
unthinking, uncritical masses who want to be repulsed and
scared, but don't want to have to be critical and think about
what they are reading.
Many on this list have bewailed the shrinking audience for
hard boiled fiction. We both read LA Requiem at about the
same time. At least it turns out the villain is not a serial
killer killing randomly. There is more to the book than that.
Perhaps too much. but it has clues and logic. Maybe Crais,
who is clearly influenced by Chandler through Parker, was
trying to make LA Requiem his breakthrough book that would
appeal to more than than hard boiled readers.
BTW, Mark, if what I wrote has been going through your head
try reading Alfred Bester's sf mystery, The Demolished Man.
Mark
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