I've been meaning to write this for a while, but never got
around to it. Anyway, I've been working my way through Howard
Brown'e anthology Incredible Ink. As many have already noted,
A Brief Memoir is very interesting, both for its insight into
Browne's writing and his comments on writers with whom he
worked.
Most of the stories I've read so far feature Wilbur Peddie.
The stories are good, but Peddie is anything but hardboiled.
He wears a bowler and is always very proper and polite,
although this does not stop him from picking locks or
misrepresenting himself while trying to skiptrace deadbeats
for the Tinsley Department Store. So Peddie is a meek, mild
kind of guy in a slightly hardboiled world, as represented by
a pair of cops he keeps running into. One of them finds
Peddie highly amusing, even as he relies on him to solve the
murders Peddie stumbles across.
Lafayette Muldoon is the troubleshooter for a real estate
company. He is a smartass and a ladies man, but I still
wouldn't call him hardboiled. He's kind of a younger, single
version of Nick Charles.
So far, Man in the Dark is the only one without one of
Browne's regular characters. This is the story he wrote using
the name of his friend Roy Huggins. In some ways it's a dry
run for Thin Air. Both revolve around a man who refuses to
believe what everyone else is telling him about what has
happened to his wife. Still, not too hardboiled.
I also read the first Paul Pine novel, Halo in Blood. In the
Memoir, Browne notes that he once met Chandler and told him,
"I've been making a living off you for years." In some ways
this book is more Chandler than Chandler, almost, but not
quite a caricature of the PI novel. That said, it's also a
great traditional PI novel. A good plot (though a bit stilted
in places, but momentum gets you past those moments), great
smartass quips and a PI whose hardboiled shell covers a
romantic yolk.
However, Browne was not just a pastiche artist. He may be
even more skeptical of authority figures than Chandler.
SPOILER When I first read this book about 20 years ago, I was
shocked that the cop did it. Not that it didn't fit or that
the cop hadn't already proved himself at least a jerk, but he
was a cop. I think it was the first older PI novel I read
with a corrupt cop (I still can't think of too many other
examples form that era, except for Thompson, of course). And
a priest did it in one of the other novels, Halo for Satan, I
think. Was the killer another authority figure in Halo in
Brass? I can't recall. Anyway, Browne has/had a healthy
disdain for authority figures.
Good books.
Mark
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