<<What am I reading? (if you really want to
know)>>
Of course I do. We've had this type of discussion several
times. Since
people read all kinds of things, it can open up interesting
impromptu
discussions.
You are lucky to be discovering Ross Macdonald's work. His
books are
"all the same" and at the same time not the same, always in
interesting
ways. My favorite is probably "The Chill", followed by "The
Underground
Man". Every time he's mentioned here, all sorts of opinions
come up
(from the very positive to the quite negative). Personally, I
have
cooled my enthusiasm about him a bit, but I am still grabbed
immediately
by his books, no matter how many times I've read them.
As to Burke, I am a fan and have a very high opinion of him.
It seems
clear to me that he is a truly hardboiled writer (as much in
his
Robicheaux novels as in the rest of his work), one of the
finest. Again,
you'll find that there's raravian disagreement on this.
Over the years, I've become disappointed with the Spenser
series. The
plots have become thin, Spenser himself went from PI to IP,
and I don't
much like Susan and Spenser's conformist and self-satisfied
(almost
yuppie) attitude. But the first three or four books were and
are really
good, and the man can write, no question about it. The
decline of the
Spenser series may be due to "market conditions", as they
say.
Regards,
MT
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