>
>The way I see it, Leigh Brackett stands head over
shoulders above every
>other female mystery writer I've read with the
exception of Patricia
>Highsmith (and maybe Dorothy Hugues and Josephine Tey,
but Hughes was
>not always hardboiled, and Tey was not hardboiled
though she could be
>dark enough). I recently read Brackett's "An eye for
an eye", a fine
>dark suspense novel without an ounce of drippiness
despite the
>possibilities of the central situation.
>
>Regards, and apologies for the length of
this.
>
>MT
>
All of the writers you mention are very good, but Brackett
was a bit
of a a "writer's writer" in that she consistently turned in
stories that
still hold up on virtually every genre she chose to tackle.
Though she was
the consumate pulp hack, a reader nonetheless always felt
that she was
giving him her best effort. She consistently demonstrated
that she was
capable of good characterizations, crisp dialogue, and even
some poetic
moments, but never let any of these intrude on the story
value. I would
guess that there are few people on this list, or any list,
who haven't
enjoyed her screenplays, though they probably didn't realize
that it was her
they were enjoying.
One non-hardboiled woman worth a try is the rather
depressing Hilda
Lawrence, whose _Death Of A Doll_ is rightly regarded as a
bit of a classic.
One of those mysteries that almost crosses over into
psychological horror.
James
James Michael Rogers
jetan@ionet.net
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.