--- William Denton <
buff@pobox.com> wrote:
> Some of the colleges at the University of
Toronto
> have book sales in the
> fall, and I got some good stuff this
year:
>
> Edward S. Aarons: ASSIGNMENT--BLACK
VIKING;
> ASSIGNMENT--HELENE;
> ASSIGNMENT--SUICIDE; ASSIGNMENT--ZORAYA;
> ASSIGNMENT--NUCLEAR NUDE. I
> don't even really like this series, but at a
buck
> each, I grabbed them
> all.
I'm a big fan and booster of this series. I've read HELENE
and SUICIDE from your pile and remember liking them a lot.
They are what they are -- pulp spy adventure fiction --
they're just a good version of it.
> John D. MacDonald: THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY
I think this is one of the strongest of the series.
Right now I'm rereading a couple of Westlake's
"Grofield" novels he wrote under the Stark name: THE DAMSEL
and LEMONS NEVER LIE. There were only four books of these,
but I think they're the best thing he's done.
The Parker novels seem to me good but facile, more an
experiment in technique than something deeply felt. The same,
in other ways, could be said about the Dortmunder books. In
fact -- and I well know this is a minority opinion -- I think
this is the abiding sin of Westlake more generally: I've read
a lot of his stuff over the years, liked some, didn't like
others, but almost all of it felt very slick to me, smoothly
done but not much more than that.
With these Grofield novel, though, Westlake managed to split
the difference between Parker and Dortmunder,
and they really seem "alive" to me in ways that the
others don't IMHO. It's hard to put into words, but there's a
warmth here I don't often find in Westlake's work.
Highly recommended if you can find them.
doug
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 26 Oct 2004 EDT