<<Maybe we should just say that we discuss any
fictional crime novel
which is suspenseful and fairly tough-minded, in which the
protagonist
can be a criminal or not, female or male, sane or insane,
that has that
wonderful noirish je ne sais quoi. In this sense I'd vote for
including
Thomas Harris and Caroll O'Connell and Ruth
Rendell.>>
The list is about hardboiled crime fiction. I don't know the
work of
Carol O'Connell, but I would say that neither Harris nor
Rendell are
hardboiled. Harris writes pure suspense with psychos and
Rendell writes
what, for lack of a better word, I'll call polite
psychological
mysteries (at times she reminds me of that great writer,
Margaret
Millar). I don't see what is hardboiled about either of these
two
writers; they don't have hardboiled characters or situations.
I can't
see them as noir either.
I personally would not be interested in discussions of serial
killer
novels, a subgenre that has become an industry - even when
it's done
brilliantly as in Thomas Harris's or John Camp's work. At
this point, I
cannot help but read these stories as clich=E9s. After
reading Connelly's
_The Poet_ I felt I had been taken - a fast and suspenseful
read that
broke no new ground and left no sediment.
Regards,
MT
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