Thank you, thank you...but, er, my straight-faced
recommendation was
also tongue-in-cheek (to add another cliche to the cascade).
But it is
true that Daly's novels are virtually unknown. _The Hidden
Hand_ was
also reissued on paper by Harper, together with a couple of
other Daly
books. I don't think those are in print any more, so it's
nice to have
the electronic edition. Is it in Acrobat format?
Daly delivered torrents of action without the scruples of the
stylist
who must polish, cut, trim, and embroider; he was also
unfettered by the
rules of the logician. His hero in this novel and in so many
short
stories, quintessential harboiled P.I Race Williams, pushes
ahead and
dammit all, shooting on sight and on mere suspicion, doing
the thinking
afterwards. In his entertaining book of memoirs, _The Pulp
Jungle_,
Frank Gruber (himself a considerable pulpster) speaks highly
of his
friend Daly, who apparently was a meek man with not an ounce
of
hardboiled in him except when writing. Gruber thinks that
Daly deserves
more recognition (which I interpret to mean that he was a
great hack,
not an ordinary one). There are many better and subtler
writers, but
no-one was more hardboiled than Daly, not even his spiritual
son Mickey
Spillane.
Regards,
MT
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