Carrie wrote:
"This is a pretty sophisticated group of mystery readers with
very diverse tastes and while we've had a few bursts of
enthusiasm for the book, most reactions are along the lines
of "dated," "dull," "I didn't care what happened to any of
these people.""
Although I would argue against the notion that Red Harvest is
dated or about not caring about any of the characters, I can
at least understand where these criticisms are coming from.
Some people don't like period pieces, even if they weren't in
their day, and the Red Harvest plot has been recycled by so
many, it probably would not seem new to someone reading it
for the first time. And some people can't find themselves
caring about characters they don't like, but I think
Hammett's characters are always thoroughly interesting, even
if often unlikeable.
But dull? I'm with you, Bill, how could anyone find Red
Harvest dull?
"But it does seem out of step with what modern readers expect
out of a mystery - comprehensible plot, extensive
novel-length character development."
To tell you the truth, this latter trait is one of the things
I find so frustrating with so many current mysteries. They
expend so many pages of deep characterization and background
for what are essentially stock characters. I know it's not
hardboiled, but a particularly egregious example of this was
Balducci's Absolute Power. I'll give him props for the plot,
but he could have cut a third to a half of the book and it
would have been a taut thriller. Instead the book was bloated
with all sorts of unneeded and cliched stuff about the
father-daughter relationship, etc. It's not like we hadn't
already seen every single one of these characters in numerous
other thrillers.
I've always thought that one of the greatest skills of
Hammett, Gores and Ross Thomas, to name but a few, was their
ability to capsulize a character in a relatively brief
description. Thomas was a particular master of this, and he
would do it with all of his characters, no matter how minor.
As someone noted not too long ago, he would spend just as
much time introducing a character who would die two pages
later as he would one who would appear in three more
books.
Mark
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