Re: RARA-AVIS: Bouchercon discoveries

From: Al Guthrie ( allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk)
Date: 29 Oct 2003


----- Original Message ----- From: < Moorich2@aol.com>
> Discovering new writers is always a highlight of attending a Bouchercon.
> Discovering new old writers is just as exciting to me. I do have a bad
habit of
> going from zero to 60 very quickly on a limited knowledge about a writer.
> More than twenty years ago I listened to Mike Nevins sing the praises of
William
> Ard and afterwards raced young Billy Crider to the book room to search
this
> forgotten master out. Back home I found and bought more copies including
the
> ones completed by Lawrence Block and John Jakes (which were pricey due to
the
> hot covers). Unfortunately, I finally read a couple and found Mr. Ard to
be a
> tad mediocre. Boring even. I will say that I liked his Buchannan
westerns, a
> series he started. But that's about it.

If you haven't done so already, Richard, try "You'll Get Yours", which Ard wrote for Lion under the pseudonym Thomas Wills. Some reasons why you might like it. It opens with an original and effective use of tenses throughout chapter one. The plot's as tight as anything I've read lately. It's as gritty as a newly gritted road that's been gritted with new formula super-grit. Ard died March 12, 1960, aged 37. Even though he wrote more than thirty novels in ten years, I wonder what Ard might have achieved had he lived a little longer.

There's a superb article on Ard in Paperback Parade #48.

Thanks for the info on Stewart Sterling. Hope you've left one or two books out there for the rest of us.

One of my own recent purchases is "Death Of A Source" by Richard A. Moore. Looking forward to reading it. I've heard good things about him.

Al

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