<<Do you think there are a lot of similiararites (heel
of a word, that)
with the early Tucker and the early Scudder? Both are
'disgraced'
ex-cops turning to PI work to try to resolve something. Both
have the
same
'feel' and settings. Westlake and Block were mates so maybe
they hit on
the idea over a drink and let it run. Just a
thought.>>
Those were the dog days for the P.I. genre, which had been
semi-comatose
for a decade. It's possible that Coe's creation of a fully
dimensional
P.I. with a real life and real problems was an attempt to
bring the
genre up to date; and quite likely Block attempted to do the
same thing,
though his Scudder series was written later. In any case, the
five
Tucker Coe books hold up very well two and a half decades
later - a
couple of them, _Murder Among Children_ and _A Jade in Aries_
remain
outstanding examples of the genre. I notice some influence of
Thomas
Dewey on Tucker Coe's realistic and basically pessimistic
approach to
the P.I. story.
By the way, what happened to the idea of each of us
collecting a "best
of" list of crime fiction books? I have a draft of sorts, not
definitive
yet. What's nice about this is that it made me take a look at
what I
have and what I remember. Also, to weed out a couple dozen
books that
don't cut the mustard (or that, at the very least, I never
want to read
again).
To avoid clogging up the list, maybe someone should volunteer
to receive
and collect these "best of" lists and keep them available
somewhere (the
FAQ?). I am not volunteering myself because this fall I have
a very busy
schedule with deadlines and so on.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
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