There's something very appealing about bringing home a box of
interesting books from a thrift store, especially one
containing THE BLACK PATH OF FEAR by Cornell Woolrich. I live
in Oakland, California but work in San Francisco, where I
sometimes visit a store that specializes in vintage
paperbacks from the Golden Era or should I say the Gold Medal
era. It's like a wonderful museum or gallery. It has all the
Willeford, Goodis and Thompson paperbacks you could ever
dream of...Manhunt anthologies and other glossy magazines and
books on collecting. It's rarefied air in there, but I'm
basically just a reader, with somewhat shallow pockets, and
only an incidental collector...occasionally there's something
I just have to have. So sometimes, when I visit that
store/archive I find myself wondering, who are the "Gold
Medal" writers of today? I was a thrift store myself
recently, I came home with a couple of books by previously
unknown authors, A SIMPLE PLAN by Scott Smith and THE JOB by
Douglas Kennedy. Although their books are a lot thicker, to
me if it were still happening, these guys would be the Gold
Medal authors. So my question is: Who among contemporary
writers do you think would rate that distinction?
-Dennis
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