RARA-AVIS: Re: BLUE MURDER

From: Kevin Burton Smith ( kvnsmith@colba.net)
Date: 07 Mar 2001


George wrote:

>Mark asks about the books NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and BUILD MY GALLOWS HIGH. In
>the late 80s Maxim Jakubowski edited a trade paperback series for Simon and
>Schuster called Blue Murder, which included those two titles. The gimmick
>was that all of the books in the series had been made into noir or noirish
>films...

Hmmmm....Simon & Schuster, out of London, did indeed publish Blue Murder, but not not all the books in that series were made into films. Most of them were, but some of them were just great books. They also published Leigh Brackett's NO GOOD FROM A CORPSE and Delores Hitchens' SLEEP WITH SLANDER and SLEEP WITH STRANGERS.

Leave it to the Brits to keep these American books in print, and then ship 'em back to the colonies to sell. Which, coincidentally, is how I first read your books, George.

Of course, maybe those offered for sale in the States were actually published there, not the U.K., and omitted the non-filmed books in the series.

And Mr. Bowers (Hi, Bill!) asked:

>[I have, but have not yet read, FAMILY HONOR, which (I believe) was
>more-or-less written on assignment for a series of proposed tv
>movies. Does anyone have an opinion on it -- undoubtedly somewhere in the
>Archives it's been mention -- or the status ... if any ... of the tv tie-in?]

It was actually pretty enjoyable. God help me, I got hooked on it. A little action, a couple of romantic obsessions, generations in conflict, revenge, desire, violence, the IRA thrown in for fun...I could see it as a mini-series, but one of the better ones, more RICH MAN, POOR MAN than the usual syrupy drippy romantic slush. Maybe it was Parker trying to do something along the lines of CASABLANCA. It was certainly better than his love story, HOPE AND GLORY, which actually nicked its title from CASABLANCA's theme song.

-- 

Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.thrillingdetective.com
Now online: The P.I. Poll Grab Bag. Fiction by Laura Lippman, Darren Subarton and Robert Hoyden. And the debut of FEMME NOIR. -- # 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/ .



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