Re: RARA-AVIS: McPartland

From: Etienne Borgers ( freeweb@rocketmail.com)
Date: 03 Feb 2000


When Mc Partland is good he's *very* good! And by chance you get one of his bests, IMO his masterpiece: 'See You in Hell'- hard-boiled, somber and violent. I still remember the efect it had on me when I read it for the first time, long ago. His best novels were always very violent but really griping and leaning to Noir.

Second to this:"The Wild Party"

And another special one is "The Kingdom of Johnny Cool" with a killer of the mafia as central character. Maybe less achieved than the two others but still a hell of a book. The book was adapted for cinema under the title:"Johnny Cool" film by William Asher (1963) that was later forgotten and underrated; this film is a real masterpiece of modern HB/Noir, B style, with a fantastic performance of Henri Silva in the title role.

Quite a number of his books were adapted for cinema and he wrote himself also some scenarios as I recall.

Unfortunately all novels by Mc Partland are not reaching the level of quality of the titles I mention here. But his top works definitely give him a place amongst the best authors of that period (he died in 1958)

E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384

--- Roy Epstein < dortmunder2@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Just went a'hunting in one of my favorite used book
> stores and picked up a HELLuva pair of old Gold
> Medals:A TICKET TO HELL by Harry Whittington and
> I'LL
> SEE YOU IN HELL by John McPartland. Looking forward
> to
> spending some time in Purgatory. I know
> Whittington's
> been mentioned here numerous times but can't recall
> any mention of McPartland. I've heard his name
> mentioned in a couple of articles (I think one of
> them
> was Ed Gorman's article on the Gold Medal writers)as
> someone worth checking out. Anybody familiar with
> McPartland's stuff? How does the HELL one rate?
>
> Roy

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com

--
# 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 2b29 : 03 Feb 2000 EST