Peter Walker (pw@pw.cablenet.co.uk)
Sun, 19 Sep 1999 16:24:03 +0000
Louise wrote:
> Has Lee Childs already been mentioned as one of the
newer
> noirish-hardboiled authors?
I cannot undersatnd the fuss about Childs - I have to say I
thought his stuff was no good at all. I read the first and
gave up on the second. They read like they were written using
some kind of "Write Your Own American Thriller" CD-ROM.
Central character? Click on "Tough" and
"Sensitive". A few bad guys? Try "Psychopath (Deranged)"
and
"Hispanic". Love scene? How about "Motel", "Spontaneous",
"Shower" and
"Thunder and Lightening". Bit of obligatory gratuitous
violence? Go for "Nailed to wall", "Bollocks cut off" and
"Swallowing". Shattering denouement? Try "Trusted friend
turns out to be a bad guy all along"
(Dialogue: "Oh no, not you!"). Want to be taken seriously?
Click on
"300+ pages". The hype tells us we have "The most exciting
thriller writer to hit the streets since John Grisham....and
he's British!". Why did Child pose as an American author
only, presumably, to leap out of the closet and proclaim his
true identity? There is nothing new in British writers
writing "American thrillers" but coming from America and
writing about America are two different things. Child's
statement that he's written two books with a "fresh new view
of the classic American hard-boiled genre" and that he's done
it with style just doesn't cut much ice. Erm..so I guess I
didn't rate him at all. Pete
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