I've been lurking for a couple of weeks and wondering if I
should join in at
all. I have much to learn about hard-boiled stuff and I'm a
little long in
the tooth. You can't teach an old dog new tricks and all that
stuff. My
reading habits are far too eclectic to be heavily into
hard-boiled. I'm
afraid I spend some of my time frivolously on fantasy, some
of which I have
written, westerns, other sorts of mysteries, western history
and Other (which
includes everything else and the kitchen sink).
I have followed closely the discussion regarding jazz and
movies, making a
list of films to see and music to find. You folks have cost
me money already.
Some of you recommended compilations of film music and Bill
Denton
recommended the Charlie Haden Quartet West CD entitled
"Always Say Goodbye."
I don't recall that he said that it was so closely allied to
The Big Sleep,
the novel of which I am currently reading. It's really
excellent.
While I was buying I looked for The Crime Scene but instead
found two
compilations from Rhino entitled "Crime Jazz: Murder in the
First Degree" and
"Crime Jazz: Murder in the Second Degree." Each of these has
18 cuts from a
variety of movies and television series.
Someone mentioned Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos the
other day. I
recently finished reading that book and thought it overlong.
There were two
good stories buried in the novel, but at 350 pp. I thought it
about a hundred
pages too long. There was too much drinking and too much sex
for me. Now I'm
no prude and don't for a minute believe that there shouldn't
be any of either.
A book could hardly be hard-boiled without it, could it? But
a flashback to
fifteen years previous and the trip that Nick Stefanos and a
friend took to
deliver something to New Orleans turned into a chapter long
binge of stopping
a road houses for drinking bouts. I'm not sure it added
anything to the
story, even if the person accompanying Nick has now hired him
to find his
wife. And so Nick is invited to have sex with a lesbian
friend so she can
have a baby. That, too, had nothing much to do with the two
major cases which
Nick is trying to solve. Maybe I'll try Pelecanos again some
day, but not
soon.
Well, that's enough for this time. Thanks to Kevin Smith for
straightening me
out on which e-mail address to use to partake in this
discussion. I'll only
check in when I think I have something worth saying. But you
can rest assured
that I'll be hanging around seeing what the rest of you have
to say.
Cheers,
Frank Denton
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