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RARA-AVIS: Scorched Face



Ready to start a thread on "Scorched Face" too?

Reading this after "Red Wind" reminded me how straightforward Hammett seems
in his plots, nearer to the classical tradition than Chandler (which may be
why some prefer him).  Two missing persons, a mysterious suicide, a
horrible corpse (face), leads, cross-checking (working with police!),
waiting and then the push into action to make something happen.  From a
"scorched face" to a room of a yellow house, where "seething, writhing"
bodies ("Some had no clothes.") fight to escape, like a swarm of uncovered
insects.  Ugh.  Action takes over and a number of dead bodies pile up.

Typical of Black Mask climaxes?  Seemed like many other action
pulps--swashbucklers, spy thrillers, Tarzan--crunch, grapple, bang, slash,
slump.  But I give Hammett credit for moving right into it; the speed of
those sentences!

Disappointment: virtually no deep characterization of the main villain,
Elwood.  And why not more on the fake priest, Hador?  He once was exotic,
but now he's just dead.  Oh, and his face is smooth, untouched by birds.

No hidden eroticism in this one! "Some had no clothes."  [Was "naked"
prohibited in 1925?]  Reminded of the porn book/blackmail racket that
Marlowe stumbles on in The Big Sleep.  Was the porn biz used in many pulp
detective stories?  I know the covers of the magazines came as close as
they could to the undress code.



Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>


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