Brackett does great hardboiled writing, gender having nothing
to do with it. She writes in a male voice with a certain
degree of feminine insight into human behavior. It's a great
touch for a hard-boiled male persona, since compassion is
almost always a necessity for the 'mean streets' kind of
hardboiled man i find most appealing as a protagonist. Her
characters are smart people, well-developed, and she has the
ability to write clear visual action - gun fights,
fistfights.
There's not much of her hardboiled easily available though -
it was all, except for No Good From a Corpse, pulp stories.
The only reason I've read it all or know about it is because
Dennis knew of them and decided to collect and publish them.
The only non-science fiction things I've seen by her at a
bookstore, used or new, are No Good From a Corpse and A Tiger
Among Us.
She writes much in the style of Chandler, but she is her own
voice, definitely. If anyone is interested, I would be glad
to scan and post one of the stories from D's book on our
site; let me know.
At 01:46 PM 1/2/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>I think Leigh Brackett appeared on one of the top
fives. She's a woman
>HB writer well worth checking out. Although she
didn't write a whole
>lot in the genre, it was very, very good.
>
>There have been occasional debates on the list about
whether
>contemporary female PI series qualify as hardboiled,
whether or not
>their extended families (real or, usually, surrogate)
and/or recognition
>of their feelings (things just as evident in many
contemporary male PI
>writers from Parker to Vachss) disqualify them. I
don't think they do.
>They may be medium boiled, but I like the series by
Karen Kijewski,
>Linda Barnes and the first several Sara Paretskys. I
never could read
>Grafton. I also particularly like the recent series
by SJ Rozan about a
>male white private eye and his female Chinese
sometime-partner; one is
>the first person narrator of one book, the other the
next. The latest
>paperback in the series is near the top of my
to-be-read pile.
>
>Mark
>
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http:/www.dennismcmillan.com
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