RARA-AVIS: Re: Somewhere A Roscoe

Kevin Smith (kvnsmith@colba.net)
Sun, 26 Jul 1998 11:05:41 -0500 >Hello, all. S.J. Perlman wrote a hilarious scenario, about 10 pages long, a
>spoof of the HB genre, much like Hammett's work. It's called "Somewhere a
>Roscoe" and appears in the anthology "The Most of S.J. Perlman." I laughed
>myself silly reading and thought perhaps some of readers here might enjoy
>it.

Yep, Somewhere A Roscoe is a classic, a real heart-felt (albeit
tongue-in-cheek) tribute to Bellem's Dan Turner. Perelman also wrote one of
the great spoofs of the entire private eye genre, My Lovely Appetizer",
which zeroes in on the excesses of everyone from Sam Spade to Dan Turner,
and particularly Marlowe and his band of world-weary descendants. It
features P.I. Mike Noonan, Irish enough to know the "difference between a
gossoon and a bassoon" and tough enough to know a red herring (or a pink
one) when he sees one. It's all hear: the witty wordplay, the cynical
secretary, the dangerous dame/client and the suspiciously-tinted sea food.
The classic hardboiled parody. I've no idea where Appetizer was first was
published, but it's bound to be in one or another of Perelman's collected
works... Hunt it down. Read it.

According to Jeff Siegel's The American Detective, humourist S.J. Perelman
"always seemed to show up on the fringes of the hard-boiled crowd. He was a
drinking buddy of Hammett and Lillian Hellman's."

**************************************************
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/

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