RARA-AVIS: DeRosso; Kerr; Two Jakes

James & Livia Reasoner (liviajames@itexas.net)
Wed, 27 Aug 1997 21:27:03 -0500 The two stories from _Hard-Boiled_ for this week make good companion
pieces. Both of them involve men who believe themselves forced to make
changes in their lives. In DeRosso's story, it's a bad man turned good,
then bad again, while in Kerr's story a good man turns bad. However,
Kerr's protagonist never seems evil, despite the murders he commits, and
now that I think about it, DeRosso's protagonist doesn't come across as a
totally evil man, either, despite his criminal background. These are both
good, competently written stories without either of them being really
outstanding.

As for the film The Two Jakes, I didn't like it at all and found it a huge
letdown after Chinatown, which does such a good job of recreating an era.
I didn't find that sense of reality in The Two Jakes. One of the cliches
of the movie industry is that it's difficult to make a sequel that's
anywhere near as good as the original. That doesn't seem to be true in
books, and I'm not sure why it should be in films.

James Reasoner
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