Re: RARA-AVIS: Ford vs. Riggs

From: Mario Taboada ( matrxtech@yahoo.com)
Date: 27 Apr 2001


<They were Last Ditch by G.M. Ford and Dead Letter by John R. Riggs. I'm a fan of both authors and have read several other books in each of their series. [good commentary snipped]>>

I think Riggs is a guy to keep an eye on. This book, in particular, is outstanding. I agree that hardboiled and noir can happen anywhere.

According to Shaw, in the old days the term "hardboiled" was applied to authors and characters (in other words, to people), not to fiction. So it's not an absurdity to have a hardboiled author writing, say, traditional mystery tales. If you take away Hammett, Chandler, and all the boundaries that have been established by publishers and critics, there is a lot more hardboiled out there than the narrow categories would suggest.

A good example is Billie Sue Mosiman, an excellent hardboiled voice producing a very different type of story, a story that per se would not necessarily catch the eye of the hardboiled fan. Her fiction is not marketed as hardboiled, nor does it indulge in the cliché³ of the subgenre, but in spirit it's hardboiled.

Best regards,

MrT

=====

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/

--
# 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 : 27 Apr 2001 EDT