RARA-AVIS: Re: Recommended Authors

Ted White (tedwhite@compusnet.com)
Tue, 06 Oct 1998 15:32:25 -0400 Mario Taboada offers a comprehensive, but unfortunately
non-alphabetical, list of authors for Roger Kurtz to find and read,
and amends it with some more. Armed with his list, I trolled my
bookshelves and came up with the following additional authors.
However, I would *not* recommend Spillane to anyone over 18; the man
was a hack writer of two-page comic-book text stories. (He never made
it into the pulps, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding, and I
don't think he even actually wrote real comic-book scripts. Stan Lee
can't remember any, and he was the teenaged editor of the Marvel
comics which ran Spillane's text-stories.) If Spillane belongs on
this list, then so does an unremitting hack like Frank Kane (who
recycled scenes and bits from book to book) -- and whose books I
enjoyed more than I did Spillane's. However:

Philip Atlee/James Atlee Phillips
Marvin Albert/Albert Conroy/Nick Quarry/et al
George Baxt
Andrew Bergman
Edgar Box
Kendall Foster Crossen/M.E.Chaber/Richard Foster/Christopher Monig
E. V. Cunningham
Stephen Dobyns
John B. Ethan
Alan Furst
Pete Hamill (yes, that one)
Joe L. Hensley
Richard Hoyt
Timothy Harris
Roy Huggins (a classic hardboiled writer of the forties who went into
TV)
Peter Israel
Richard Jessup
Ed Lacey (a favorite)
Hal Masur
Frank McAuliffe (three classic tour de force novels of manic
brilliance about a killer for hire)
Margaret Millar (Ross Macdonald's wife and better half)
Wade Miller (two authors in collaboration; later the name was used by
only one and not as well)
Richard Moore
Thomas Perry (one of the very best writing today)
"Anthony Rome"
Brad Soloman (brilliant author, handles present tense so well you
don't notice it)
Ross Thomas (jeeze he was good)
Roderick Thorp (wrote a masterpiece in "The Detective")
Wilson Tucker (his "Chinese Doll" a forties classic)
Richard Wormser

In addition: Westlake also wrote the Samuel Holt books; Block wrote
the Paul Kavanaugh and Chip Harrison books, still available as used
books under those names although they've now been reissued under his
own name.

That ought to do for a third week!

--Ted White

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