Bad mistake. It is possible that a persuasive arguement could
be made that
not only is there a lot of good third person HB out there,
but in terms of
truly important work, there may actually be more done in the
third person
than in the first.
The Maltese Falcon has already been mentioned, but The Glass
Key, in my
opinion Hammett's greatest achievement, is also 3P. Many of
Chandler's short
stories, including two -- Pickup on Noon Street and The King
in Yellow --
that I consider better than most of his later work, were
3P.
A lot of the sadly underappreciated Merle Costiner's pulp
work was also 3P,
as was much of Horace McCoy's work. All four of Willeford's
Hoke Moseley
novels were 3P. And then there's Jim Thompson.
When it comes to living writers except Jim Hall (who's
already been
mentioned), Bill Pronzini's two most accomplished novels --
Blue Lonesome
and A Wasteland of Strangers -- are 3P. So is Les
Standiford's John Deal
series, Joe Gores' DKA File series, and the Gabriel du Pre
novels (Montana
hardboiled?) by Peter Bowen. This is just off the top of my
head; if I cared
to take the time to root around the shelves, I've no doubt I
could come up
with other examples of important 3P hardboiled.
First person narration has been an effective device in some
hardboiled work,
and it has become something of a convention when it comes to
the straight PI
yarn, but to view it as a hardboiled credential is limiting
and demonstably
false.
Paul Bergin
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