In the discussion of Robert Parker, somebody referred to
Jeremiah Healey's books as crummy, or a word to that effect.
The implication was that Healey's books were Parker
knock-offs. I don't see it. The authors may both call Boston
home, but the similarity ends there. Healey's sleuth is less
physical and considerably less of a wiseguy than Spenser. He
works alone; no sociopathic sidekick needed. There's not much
food talk. His lady friends are all dead. And the novels are
extremely well-plotted, filled with detection and intelligent
interrogations. If there's any literary influence, it seems
to come from Stephen Greenleaf. What's not to like?
Regarding the comments about "Bullitt," it's hard to believe
somebody was counting hubcaps and studying the Mustang's gear
shift while one of the great movie chases was going on, but I
suppose this is one more bit of evidence that we're living in
an MBA world.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Dec 2000 EST