Re: RARA-AVIS: The Moving Target

From: Etienne Borgers ( freeweb@rocketmail.com)
Date: 30 Mar 2001


The biggest problem I had with most of Mcdonald novels is that they surely don't reflect the place he holds on the American "hall of fame" for noir/HB writers. Most of the critics of mystery lit put him on the podium with Hammer and Chandler!

I personally think it's a fallacy and his place is not there. A good writer, but with a lot of "misses". Obsessed by families pasts and hasty psychology... He's a second rank writer, even if he can craft his novels.

Somebody said here he writes always the same novels, as did Goodis.. I agree, but most of the time Mcdonald is uninvolving, and he really serves the same kind of plots, (rarely interesting). Besides his cripple plots
 what are you left with? Goodis repeats the same world, the same kind of losers, but he is involving, and his novels speak to a part of our deep selves. And, for the reader, his obsessions are haunting ...

E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384

--- abc < abc@wt.net> wrote:
> Daniel: Mcdonald got better. Unless you're the
> kind of
> person who has to read a series in order, I'd
> recommend that
> you try a later book (say, THE CHILL). If you don't
> like
> that one any better than you liked THE MOVING
> TARGET, then
> move on to someone else.
>
> Bill Crider
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