RARA-AVIS: Re: The Mean Streets

From: Kevin Burton Smith ( kvnsmith@colba.net)
Date: 29 Feb 2000


>"Bill Denton was dead, and lucky to be dead. He had been very badly
>used."

Gee, and I was just talking to him. He seemed fine...

And Dick (Bill's Playboy buddy) wrote:

>Almost every PI writer gets the "new Raymond Chandler" quote, but I
>think Dewey and
>Howard Brown (with his Paul Pine) are the authors who really did come close
>to Chandler.

Just to slam it all home, THE MEAN STREETS opens with a quote from Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder," showing exactly where Dewey nicked his title, and that he knew exactly what he was doing. The book came out in 1954, Chandler's essay in 1944.

And I'd add Leigh Brackett to that small list of Chandler disciples who really got it right.

Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/ This month: The P.I. Poll on Short Fiction, plus new stuff from Hugh Lessig, Peter Parmantie and Dave White.

--
# 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 : 29 Feb 2000 EST