On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, Davis Skene Melvin wrote: : I'm the new kid on the block. My interest in hard-boiled detective : fiction is wrapt in my interest in crime fiction in general and : Canadian crime fiction in particular, of which latter I am THE : bibliographer, having just published: CANADIAN CRIME FICTION : 1817-1996; an annotated comprehensive bibliography and biographical : dictionary of Canadian crime writers, Hey, nice to have you here. I heard an interview with you done by Shelagh Rogers, I think, on the CBC a little while back. Do you know of any Canadian novels that qualify as hardboiled? Howard Engel's Benny Cooperman mysteries are usually held up as being about as close as a Canadian can get, we being a quiet, retiring people. The books are quite good, but Benny's more softboiled, or even poached (and he loves to eat egg sandwiches). I prefer Eric Wright's Charlie Salter books, but they're more Canadian police procedurals (until recently, I think he's changed a bit lately). Are there any Canadians who write more classically hardboiled stuff, or twisted noirish things? Speaking of bibliographies, I have pretty well finished off Ross Macdonald (I don't know if I mentioned that before), John D. MacDonald and James M. Cain. JDM was quite a demon, he really pumped them out. Again, corrections are welcomed - thanks to Michael Sharp for a lot of additions and corrections to the JDM biblio. Cheers, Bill http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/biblio/ -- William Denton : buff@vex.net <-- Please note new address. Toronto, Canada <-- I'm not at io.org any more. http://www.vex.net/~buff/ Caveat lector. - # RARA-AVIS: To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" # to majordomo@icomm.ca