Well, of course there are a lot of HB women
in real life.....try talking to a whore or ex-whore sometime.
They have a very cold eye. I can't think of too many books
that have been written about this milieu without
sentimentalizing it or viciously caricaturing the girls.
Probably need a female author....a GOOD female writer..... to
even try. Female cops I don't care for ....the one's that I
have met have not been too competent. Female lawyers (and
contrary to what Anthony says, criminal defense lawyers have
the hardboiled end of the stick) and PIs are better, at least
in the real world.
As far as the female characters in Chandler
go, Marlowe didn't fit the bill when it comes to promiscuity.
If I recall correctly he only sleeps with the lady he
eventually marries in the course of the entire series, and he
feels some attraction for the wholesome, albeit bitter,
ex-cop's daughter in
_Farewell, My Lovely_. If I recall correctly the idea for
_The Poodle Springs Story_ was to show that Marlowe was
incapable of doing the Nick Charles thing and being a kept
guy by his wife. Thus the title.
I don't mind Spencer having a relationship
with a regular female character, not do I think he is really
a Marlowe clone.....actually I think he is a weak McGee
clone. I'm afraid I'm really off the reservation here,
because I wasn't even crazy about the early books in the
series.....yes, they were originally fun in the Doc Savage
kind of way that Vachss books can be fun....but they never
struck me as HB in even the limited way that Mike Shayne
stories are. At best they were entertaining pulp
schlock.....never transcendent the way that the big guys
sometimes are....and towards the end they weren't even
entertaining.
Actually, and I don't mean to offend the
ladies of Rara- Avis, I think the best drawn women in HB are
the slightly murderous and sexually complex young things in
the James M. Cain books. They manage to be scary but also to
be comprehensible and sympathetic.
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