Re: RARA-AVIS: The Dain Curse-why the bad rap?

From: brooks hefner ( brookshefner@hotmail.com)
Date: 14 Sep 2000


the Op does not have his own car in _The Dain Curse_. he travels by train and trolley, with a few bumbling police, and ultimately, the Op, along with the other ops at the country mansion ironically, uses Fitzstephan's car to get around, after Fitzstephan is relieved of a couple of limbs.

the gentry house in the country does seem straight out of conan doyle, but perhaps out of place in the hb world? after all, chandler usually makes calls on millionaires who have "new" mansions. perhaps i'm splitting hairs, though. as far as the cult goes, that seems like it's more out of some kind of 19th century gothic english novel. maybe it's hammett's radical, rational critique of religion--i.e. it's all one elaborate hoax? other than that, however, temples and sacrifices just seem a bit odd in the world of the Op.

brooks.

> >I can't remember--does the Op have his own car? Is it mentioned what
>kind
> >it is? I noticed while watching THE MALTESE FALCON that Spade gets
>around
> >only in cabs, which I bet must have been pretty easy in downtown San
> >Francisco back then. Marlowe does a fair bit of driving in all his
>books,
> >as I recall, and so do Lew Archer and most everyone else. Matt Scudder
> >walks or takes cabs or the subway, but he's in central New York.
>
>I don't think the Op has his own car (not in Red Harvest anyway), but in
>that novel they hole up in a farmhouse somewhere, don't they, after that
>bizarre and brilliantly comic car chase? Thinking about Holmes, there are
>at least two of his cases where some of the action takes place in the US,
>and in the Valley of Fear (1915), there are some really hard-boiled moments
>involving a Pinkerton detective in the mining town of Vermissa. A template
>for RH?
>
>Cheers
>Chris
>
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