Jim wrote:
"I met his forensics researcher at a writers' conference in
Quad-Cities. He mentioned that he and Al were talking about a
CSI novel in which the William Peterson character had a dream
in which he was Sherlock Holmes, and he solved a case using
late 19th/early 20th Century forensics technology.
"I mentioned that it might be more appropriate if the
character dreamed he was Dr. John Thorndyke."
More appropriate, maybe, but probably not as commercial. And
Collins is nothing if not commercial. That is not meant as a
dig. It's just that Collins is clearly a commercial genre
writer who sees no shame in courting (and entertaining) as
big an audience as possible, in several media. And he has
certainly entertained me a number of times.
The first thing I read by him was Ms. Tree. I enjoyed the
characters and storytelling, even if I was sometimes less
than thrilled with Terry Beatty's artwork (it was pretty
stiff and he had a real problem with the foreshortening of
arms). I also enjoyed the Mike Mist Minute Mysteries in the
back and the letter column, where I read my first mention of
Ralph Dennis when Collins put out a request for any of his
books. I searched in vein for several years in those long
ago, pre-Internet days
(for myself, not him), but never found any. (I had forgotten
about him until reading about him here. Thanks. The two I've
read are really good.) On the other hand, I found his Mad Dog
series for DC very clumsy, both in storytelling and
art.
Still, Ms Tree got me to check out his books. My favorite
series of his are the ones with professional thief Nolan and
hit man Quarry. I enjoyed both of those series quite a bit.
Speaking of which, Hard Case Crime's website says that Two
for the Money is the first time its two connected Nolan
novels have been published in one volume. Didn't Carrol
& Graff do that a decade or so ago?
He also wrote a series about a crime writer who got involved
in a few mysteries. I forget the name, but it was not Angela
Lansbury. One entry, set at a mystery writers convention, was
particularly amusing, with a pair of twins playing Donald
Westlake.
However, Nate Heller did not do it for me in the one book I
read, the first, True Detective. Part of it is certainly that
I am not much of a fan of historicals, but I still went
through several of Stuart Kaminsky's Toby Peters books and
was a huge fan of James Ellroy before finally becoming
disillusioned with him in American Tabloid (and Chinatown is
my favorite movie). I just found it instantly forgettable and
never read another.
Mark
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