Interesting insights into Red Harvest. I should emphasize
that I liked the book fine, as did several others on my other
list (for perspective, some of the highest rated books we
have read before include A Place of Execution, Connelly's
Concrete Blonde, Mystic River, The Big Sleep, and Peter
Robinson's In a Dry Season; this is not an "Absolute Power"
or "Aunt Dimity" crowd). Still, I would not have rated this
as a "great book" aside from its historical context. On the
other hand, if you sat me down with the Maltese Falcon or the
Big Sleep, and I'd never heard of the books or authors
before, I would have thought "wow, this is a great book,
bring on some more!"
Defending the notion of RH as "dull" - I wouldn't have gone
that far myself, I'm only repeating the comments others have
made, but I certainly found myself skimming some of the
shoot-em-up scenes. Nonstop action can be dull, particularly
if there's no particular reason to care who does what to
whom. Although the big idea of what the Op is doing is
interesting - turning all the baddies on each other -once it
becomes clear that that's what's going on
(pretty early in the second section, as I recall), I wasn't
particularly interested in what kind of dirt Whisper Thaler
had on Pete the Finn had on some barely differentiated third
character. The Op's machinations might not be more convoluted
than a Connelly novel (though I'm skeptical), but Connelly's
books are highly character driven, with each suspect and
victim clearly defined that it actually feels like it matters
whodunit and what happened to them. The overall point of Red
Harvest seems to be that they're all bad and corrupt and it
doesn't really matter what happens to whom. This may be
philosophically interesting, but it didn't particularly
impress me to care what was going on in the nuts and bolts of
the plot.
The question of what 20s crime fic wouldn't seem dated to
many in my other group is a good one. Maybe none. I'm prety
sure Harvest is the oldest PI book I've read (unless Holmes
counts), so I don't have a basis for comparison. I do think
many readers who are used to Connelly, McDermid, Lehane,
Rankin, Robinson, etc. DO expect a more character driven type
of story (yes, I'm sure many on this list read those writers,
but obviously this is a haven for HB enthusiasts, most if not
all of whom know a lot more about the history of the genre
than I do). "Dated" may be the wrong way to look at it
because it's about genre conventions as much as time. I don't
think many contemporary mainstream fiction readers have
similar trouble adjusting to, say, "The Great Gatsby."
Carrie
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