First off, my ten "historically significant" characters in
chronological order:
THE CONTINENTAL OP SAM SPADE DICK TRACY PHIL MARLOWE MIKE
HAMMER LEW ARCHER JOE FRIDAY STEVE CARELLA DAN KEARNEY
CHRISTIE OPARA
Those aren't necessarily the characters I feel are the most
significant; they're the characters I sincerely feel are of
great significance who I happen to like the most. There are
others who may be more historically important, but whom I
didn't enjoy as much.
Next up the ten who might not be as significant historically,
but whom I really like, in alphabetical order according to
first name.
AMOS WALKER CHARLES CARR (a write-in vote for a character I
forgot to nominate; he stars in a series of novels by Gerald
Petievitch) CHARLES RIPLEY HARRY BOSCH MATT HELM NATE HELLER
NEIL FARGO QUILLER SID HALLEY
All heroes, virtually all series characters, a large
contingent of cop-characters (particularly of those created
by cop-writers; not too surprising given my background and
predilections), and, with a single exception, all created
before 1990.
To save space I'll refrain from commenting further on
individual choices for the moment except for a couple which
have been particularly important to me.
If campaigning is allowed, I'd like to put in a plug for
Friday and Carella. I've noticed several votes for Martin
Beck, who is a direct descendant of these two. The Wahloos
once said in an interview that they were inspired to write
Stockholm-set police procedurals after being hired to
translate 87th Precinct novels into Swedish. They even toyed
with the idea of proposing an international collaboration
with McBain in which Beck would travel to New York to meet
Carella. Without Carella, there'd probably never have been a
Beck, and Carella and his colleagues at the 87th grew
directly out of McBain's desire to do in prose what Jack Webb
was doing on radio and TV, so without Friday, there'd be no
Carella. It may seem like a stretch to connect the
ultra-conservative Webb with the Marxist Wahloos, but the
connection is closer than might at first appear.
I think, possibly, that Friday is handicapped in many eyes by
the color "revival" DRAGNET series that ran in the late '60s
and early '70s, which (with the exception of a few episodes,
particularly a two-hour special based on the Harvey Glatman
case) doesn't stand up well to re-viewing. If you're old
enough, however, to recall the original b&w series from
the 50s, or, better still, the radio series, which showed
Friday at his best, I'd urge you to consider giving this
father of the police procedural sub-genre one of your 20
votes.
Thanks for bearing with my proselytizing.
JIM DOHERTY
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