Mario, I've got a bibliography of Block on my site (from the
homepage, hit
Authors and Creators). It's not complete, especially as far
as short
stories go, but I'm working on it. It might be a good
starting point, and
if anyone out there could point out one's I've missed I'd
appreciate it.
And then there's all those lesbian porno books he supposedly
wrote that
people keep whispering about...
By the way, I think the first five Scudder novels, while
different in tone,
as every bit as good (and that's very, very good) as
everything that
followed. In fact, I'd say the first five are classic,
traditional
hardboiled novels, and everything since (in the Scudder
series, anyway) has
been Block's attempt to create a newer, contemporary
hardboiled style that
acknowledges that people have lives and family and
friends.
(WARNING: THIS PARAGRAPH MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS)
In fact, this seems to be a major preoccupation of many of
the
more-established contemporarary writers, it seems; at least
in their series
characters. Of course, they're all settling down too, so in a
way it's a
natural progression. Hell, even Chandler married off Marlowe
at the end, in
Poodle Springs. And Macdonald's Archer's icy exterior began
to crack in The
Blue Hammer. And Travis McGee's found out in The Lonely
Silver Rain that,
even pre-AIDS, condoms weren't such a bad idea. Granted,
these were all the
last books in the series...some of today's authors seem to
have had
something like this in mind from the beginning...but it might
have been
interesting to see Marlowe as a married guy (as written by
Chandler, not
Parker or Stoppard), or Archer as part of a couple, or McGee
as a dad, or
even a grand dad.
(END OF SPOILER ALERT)
I don't know if the results would be hardboiled or not, but
it would have
been interesting...
**************************************************
Kevin Smith
It's summertime, and the living is cheesy...What are you
reading this summer?
Tell us in this month's P.I. Poll on The Thrilling Detective
Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
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