Glad to be reminded of Lawrence Block's favorite writers. I
have read Block's comments before of his admiration of John
O'Hara. In one, Block very smartly pointed out the contrast
between O'Hara's fiction where relationships were so
carefully explored and understood and the author's personal
life where he was always feuding over imagined slights.
O'Hara is worthy of much more attention than he receives and
especially for writers, there is so much to be learned by
diving into his stories.
Maugham is one of the great story tellers and his THE SUMMING
UP is one of the great books on writing.
So what does Gil Brewer have to do with this list of writers.
Not much, I suppose, other than his own story telling
ability. It so happens that I was flipping through THE BIG
BOOK OF NOIR and again read Pronzini's tribute to Brewer that
I first read when it appeared in Mystery Scene. I've always
liked Brewer and Pronzini brings him so wonderfully,
tragically to life. Flipping to another article I noticed for
the first time that Ed Gorman rates Brewer's A KILLER IS
LOOSE (Gold Medal 1954) as Brewer's best.
Well I have a copy of A KILLER IS LOOSE but have never read
it. Why? The cover features a dickhead wearing a suit and
holding a briefcase and a luger.
If I want to read a Brewer why would I choose that
novel over the Brewer paperbacks with cool babe covers like
WILD or PLAY IT HARD, or THE THREE-WAY SPLIT or THE GIRL FROM
HATEVILLE?
Gorman's recommendation finally got me to open the
unattractive novel, and all I can say is Wow! Gil Brewer's A
KILLER IS LOOSE is a classic Gold Medal novel and it features
one cold-ass killer. This is the true hard stuff, my friends,
with a serial killer circa 1954, decades before it became a
cliche.
Oh, while I am at it, another chilling killer who has never
left my memory since the first reading can be found in "A
Good Man is Hard to Find" by my fellow Georgian Flannery
O'Connor. She is the most merciless writer I have ever read
and one of the most gifted. Before I read her I need a good
day and time to gird my loins because God only knows what she
is going to put me through.
Richard Moore
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 14 Feb 2002 EST