Re: RARA-AVIS: 1st/3rd person narratives

Mark Sullivan (AnonymeInc@webtv.net)
Sun, 25 Apr 1999 23:58:01 -0400 (EDT) I can think of another alternating first person narrative, the two Dog
books by Dick Lochte, which alternate the voice of a jaded private eye
and the young girl who intends to be trains as his partner, whether he
wants to or not. This description makes the book sound cutesy, but it
is anything but. The first, Sleeping Dogs, involves trying to find the
girl's lost dog and ends up with some harrowing descriptions of
professional dogfighting. Seems to me I read another book with
alternating narrators (not counting the Nameless detective collaboration
books), but I'll have to try to remember who it is.

As far as third person-narrated private eyes go, let's not forget Joseph
Hansen's David Brandstetter. And I just read the first John
Shannon/Jack Liffey novel, third person. Earl Emerson writes his Thomas
Black books in the first, but his Mac Fontana (okay, he's not a PI, but
still) books in the third. And since they were just brought up, Don
Winslow's Neal Carey books are in the third. I think it's pretty evenly
distributed between the two.

So, are there any second-person hardboiled novels? I would guess they
are about as rare as the subjective camera work of Lady in the Lake is
in movies, a gimmick that gets old fairly quickly.

Mark

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