Great title, yes, but in July 2002, I wrote:
I picked up The Big Mango at the library. It is published by
Akashic, which also published Adios Muchachos and Jose
Latour's Outcast (indicated as out of print: has anyone else
reprinted it?), so I thought it was a good bet.
The author has all kinds of credentials as a journalist and
one other book about Nina Halligan, PI, under his belt. The
story concerns a Caribbean island nation called Misericordia,
which seems modelled on Haiti. Its president calls Nina for
help, but that's as far as I got. The book begins with
background on Misericordia's history, then moves into the
story proper, with lots of discussion of Caribbean and
African-American politics.
Anyway, the word "peazant," repeated a number of times, made
me wonder if I was missing some sort of political
connotations, or if it was just the editing that was really
bad. Thirty-four excruciating pages later, I decided the
writer and editor together were too much for me.
I had been looking forward to an exciting story featuring an
African-American woman as a tough private investigator and
was sorely disappointed. Has anyone tried Black Heat and
found it worth recommending?
*****
Let us know about D.C. Noir. I hope it lives up to its
promise.
Karin
At 04:08 PM 30/01/2006 +0000, Richard Moore wrote:
>A day or two ago I picked up a copy of the
just-published D.C. NOIR
>(Akashic Books)edited by George Pelecanos. It looks
to be a very good
>anthology with stories by Pelecanos, Jim Fusilli,
Laura Lippman,
>Robert Andrews, James Grady, and several others new
to me. The "new
>to me" category includes several that I am eager to
try including
>stories by Norman Kelley and Ruben Castaneda.
Castaneda I know from
>his journalism and Kelley has authored several noir
novels including
>two with great titles BLACK HEAT and THE BIG
MANGO.
>
>This is the latest in a series of anthologies with
earlier entries for
>Brooklyn, Dublin, Chicago, and San Francisco. Are
these earlier
>entries worth searching out?
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 30 Jan 2006 EST