15 September
"Junior Jackson's Parable" - James Hannah,
"Bonding" - Faye Kellerman
22 September
"Gravy Train" - James Ellroy,
"Batman's Helpers" - Lawrence Block,
"The Long Silence After" - Ed Gorman
What to do next?
Below is a list of all the novels I recorded from suggestions
made
earlier on. (If I missed one you wanted, I apologize. Let me
know.)
What I'd like people to do is pick the three you would most
like to
read, and rank them in order from 1 to 3, 1 being your most
preferred.
E-mail me your rankings, with a subject of "READING PICKS."
I'll
tally up the votes, and if there's no clear majority winner
on the
first round of counting (I don't expect one) then I'll
discard the
third choice and apply the second choices of everyone who had
the
loser as their first choice. (I.e., if you ranked them
Falcon, Ripley
and Trouble, and Falcon came out last, then it would get
dropped and
your votes would get added to the Ripley pile.) Really, I
should let
you rank all the choices, but that's way too much counting
for me to
do. I think we'll end up with a good and fair pick this way.
I'm not
sure how I'll vote, but they're all good and I'm game for
anything.
I think being on a novel will be a nice change from following
along in
an anthology, too.
***** Cut out and rank three entries and mail them to
buff@vex.net *****
_____ _Trouble Is My Business_ (Chandler)
_____ _The Drowning Pool_ (Ross Macdonald)
_____ _The Maltese Falcon_ (Dashiell Hammett)
_____ _Red Harvest_ (Hammett)
_____ _Farewell, My Lovely_ (Chandler)
_____ _The High Window_ (Chandler)
_____ _The Lady in the Lake_ (Chandler)
_____ _The Killer Inside Me_ (1954) (Jim Thompson)
_____ _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ (1955) (Patricia
Highsmith)
_____ _A Rage in Harlem_ (1958) (Chester Himes)
_____ _The Real Cool Killers_ (Chester Himes)
_____ _Sleeping Dog_ (Ross Macdonald)
*****
------------------------------------------------------------
*****
I doubt anything will go wrong with the list next week, but
if it
does, please e-mail val@icomm.ca (Val Dodge) and explain the
problem.
He'll probably be able to fix up whatever it is.
Plug: I don't know if anyone here is interested in
role-playing games,
but I have something to mention. Iron Crown Enterprises do
something
called the Rolemaster Standard System, which is a basic set
of rules
that can be used in any kind of RPG - fantasy,
science-fiction,
medieval, whatever. They have a new book out called _Pulp
Adventures_
(ISBN 1-55806-311-0), and with it and their basic rulebook
you can put
together a pulp role-playing adventure. _PA_ covers all kinds
of
roles, from the Femme Fatale to the Cloaded Vigilante. It
would be
easy to put together, say, a visit to Poisonville or a
Hollywood
murder. There's lots of background about the '30s and '40s
and many
facts about politics and entertainment. Interesting reading
even if
you don't do RPGs. The introduction is by Will Murray. The
only
reason I have a copy - I probably wouldn't have found out
about it
otherwise - is that my hardboiled slang glossary is in as an
appendix.
I'm pretty excited about being in the same book as Will
Murray, and
since none of my friends or family have the slightest idea
who he is,
I wanted to mention it here. :)
Bill
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task."
-- "Uncle" Oswald Hendryks Cornelius
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