Mark Sullivan (AnonymeInc@webtv.net)
Mon, 14 Jun 1999 12:38:10 -0400 (EDT)
O is for Offal.
Years ago I read A Grafton, found it utterly forgettable.
When I told fans this, they told me I should try B. I started
to, but, like I said, I had forgotten the first, and I'm
usually pretty good at remembering plots, so I read A again,
was disappointed again, but went on to B. I found B equally
predictable and never read another. And I found Milhoune a
cipher, no personality at all.
It seemed like Grafton was defensive about being a woman in a
male-dominated genre and therefore adhered too tightly to the
conventions, afraid to color outside the lines, even after so
many male writers had made coloring outside the lines a
virtue in recent PI fiction. I think the same applies to
Paretsky's first, very conventional. I am a fan of Paretsky,
though, as she did develop a character and cast that was
pretty interesting, at least for a while. And far from
bothered by her distinct point of view, I like it. I also
never saw McGee's asides as intrusive, that's part of what I
read those books for. Similarly, that's one of the
attractions of Michael Collins' Dan Fortune books (as well as
the series Collins/Lynd wrote as Mark Sadler).
Mark
-
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # To
unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Mon 14 Jun 1999 - 12:38:26 EDT