james.doherty@gsa.gov
Sat, 25 Dec 1999 07:47:29 -0600
I was out of town on a training detail for the first two
weeks in December, and I've been spending most of my e-mail
time since then trying to catch up on piled-up messages, so I
haven't been contributing to many of the recently developed
threads. Heres some short thoughts on several of them.
SENSITIVE DETECTIVES: Not a new phenomenon in HB crime
fiction at all, as Kevin so eloquently points out. See the
Continental Op in The Dain Curse, Lew Archer in The Galton
Case and just about all of his subsequent appearances, Steve
Carella in any 87th Precinct mystery in which his wife Teddy
is featured. Even such hardcases as Mike Hammer in The Big
Kill, or Matt Helm in Death of a Citizen show softer
sides.
VOICE-OVER: I like it because first-person narration is a
common practice in HB prose fiction, and voice-overs evoke
the literary roots of the HB films and TV. I was always a big
fan of the terse, reportorial narration used by Jack Web on
Dragnet. NEVER STREET: The Walker series is one of my
favorite current PI series. I like the fact that Walker's an
anachronism. Probably because I sometimes feel like I am,
too. Having said that, I was a bit disappointed in Never
Street. Justposing Walker against a film noirnut brought the
basic artificiality of Walker's film noir world into too
sharp a relief for me. I'm able to suspend my disbelief with
the other books, but not this one because the similarity of
Walker's universe with that of the films, films he enjoys but
finds artificial, makes Estelman's artifice too apparent for
me. Sort of like having Batman investigate a case at a comic
books convention. Estelman's westerns are great, and he's
also a helluva nice guy.
IN CLOSING: Hope everyone on the list has a Merry Christmas.
God Bless You All.
JIM DOHERTY
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