Al,
Re your response to my point below:
> > Lots more don't. The PI story HAS become
more
> > international in recent years, but for many
years,
> > particularly the years immediately
post-Chandler,
> it
> > was almost exclusively the province of
American
> > characters.
>
> That's because it was almost exclusively
the
> province of American writers.
If James Hadley Chase proves nothing else, he proves that
non-American writers used American characters in American
settings. And he's not the only one.
At least one other British writer of American-style PI
stories was Peter Chambers (not to be confused with Henry
Kane's character), whose sleuths and settings were invariably
American and urban.
Had Chandler never existed, the "large US city" would
probably still have been the base of choice for most PI
characters, but what struck me was the particular combination
of ingredients Chandler hit upon that was so slavishly
followed afterwards. And one of those ingredients was surely
the fact that the PI worked out of a large American
city.
JIM DOHERTY
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