<<So, the question is, who are some hardboiled female
private eyes? Two
that spring to mind immediately are Lee McGraw's Madge
Hatchett and Max
Allan Collins' and Terry Beatty's Ms. Tree. Any
others?>>
Julie Smith's series featuring Skip Langdon is hardboiled -
though
Langdon is a cop, not a P.I. This series is well worth
reading. I like
the "neutral" tone that Smith adopts.
To my mind, the very best female crime writer of the past
decade and a
half is Teri White. Once again, let me give her novel
"Triangle" the
strongest possible recommendation. I have heard her compared
to Graham
Greene - but to me she recalls Raoul Whitfield and David
Goodis.
The work of harboiled writer Sara Paretsky, after a promising
couple of
books, did not reveal to me the mettle, craftmanship, and
sense of lived
experience that characterizes the best hardboiled fiction.
The last one
was a painful experience - a humorless, dour harboiled
exercise by the
book that did not satisfy either viscerally or
intellectually.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
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