On 20 June 2004, JIM DOHERTY wrote:
: My one criticism of them is this. Collins seems to go out
of his way to
: have Heller discover solutions at odds with the prevailing
theories or
: the historical record. I don't doubt that he actually
believes the
: theories he forms, but, perhaps unconsciously, he has an
agenda. Since
: he's sending out his fictional sleuth to investigate an
actual crime,
: he's almost GOT to have his character find a solution that
contradicts
: conventional wisdom in order to make for a more interesting
novel.
That's a good point. In the one about Amelia Earhart he
doesn't have that problem, since it's all a complete mystery
(as far as I know). I think in MAJIC MAN Heller goes down to
Roswell and finds out about UFOs, so Collins must have free
reign there. It could get very dull if Heller worked on a
case and we just got a slightly fictionalized retelling, but
he can't go around upsetting every major case around.
: One of the real-life Chicago-area cops who did just that in
the actual
: case was Chief Investigator Pat Roche, of the Cook County
State's
: Attorney's Office. Roche, by the way, under his own name,
is the hero
: of one of Howard Browne's best novels, PORK CITY, which
fictionalizes
: the murder of Chicago TRIBUNE reporter Jake Lingle (a
murder that, in
: Collins's series, has a profound effect on Heller's
career).
You've mentioned this one before, and I'm going to look for
it. I really like Howard Browne.
I'll keep an eye peeled for Collins's Eliot Ness books and
other stuff. I looked for him in a couple of bookstores today
and all they had was a shelf full of CSI TV show
tie-ins.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 20 Jun 2004 EDT