> Kidding aside, a lot of list members may be using
these nominations as
> references to help choose reading material. I think
the rest of the month
> people should tell a few things about their more
obscure nominations.
Yes, that's what I've been doing--taking notes on books that
sound interesting, and I'd like to hear more.
And I'd like to nominate two very
hardboiled characters: 1. Charles LeBlanc, from William
Hoffman's _Tidewater Blood._ After spending some time in
Leavenworth and leaving the army, he lives for years as a
hermit in the Virginia swamps--until he's accused of
murdering his wealthy family. Then he's got to elude the
manhunt as he searches for a killer. (I have another Hoffman
book on Mount TBR; I don't know if it's a sequel.) 2. Shan
Tao Yun of Eliot Pattison's _Skull Mantra_ and _Water
Touching Stone._ In the first book, he's a Beijing detective
who winds up a prisoner in the gulag in Tibet because he did
his job too well and, while starving and freezing in an alien
culture, has to continue detecting; in the second book, he
explores the murderous ramifications of the Poverty
Eradication Program in the windswept deserts of Xianjiang--on
his own and AWOL from Tibet. The second book also has the
Jade Bitch, the local prosecutor, who qualifies as a
hardboiled secondary character, and people who've made
themselves at home in an obsolete missile silo near the
Indian border.
Those are the toughest protagonists
I've been able to remember so far.
Joy, not very tough, contrary to what some think
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