I just finished Latimer's THE LADY IN THE MORGUE and I'm
sorry to say I didn't really like it. Basically, I just
didn't find the book amusing. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's
that the book's humor is dated, or maybe it's just that I
didn't "get" the sense of humor contained therein. (I've
always thought that humor is one of the hardest things for a
writer to pull off sucessfully. Humor, after all, is a very
individual thing, and you always run the risk that people
just won't find you funny.) At one point some character says
something like "There's been a murder and you guys are
screwing around like a couple of vaudville clowns." That's
sort of what I felt about the whole book.
One interesting thing about the book is the amount of booze
consumed by the principle characters, which is immense. The
hero, Crane, is basically an alcoholic, and it's played
strictly for laughs. Compare that to the number of
"recovering alcoholic" PI novels in recent years (almost a
sub-genre now) and it's interesting to see how societal
standards have changed. (LADY came out in 1936.)
Has anyone read anything else by Latimer? I can strongly
recommend SOLOMON'S VINEYARD. It's a "lone PI cleans up a
corrupt town" kind of thing, but done exceptionally well. In
fact, it's one of my favorite PI novels, period.
doug
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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