I've been lurking for what seems like years, posting only
occasionally. Today I actually have time on my hands to do a
little writing, so am firing off a number of messages about
what I've been reading in the past few months. I hope this
isn't considered to be hogging the list. I'm in the middle of
Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes and will try to
weigh in on that before the end of the month.
After hearing so much about it, I finally obtained The Big
Blowdown by George Pelecanos through an interlibrary loan. I
read it in four days, and not because I had to give it back
right away, either. The tension builds slowly but steadily
for most of the book and the character of Pete Karras has
lots of time to develop. The story's about a bunch of really
tough guys, emphasis on guys. The women are totally
peripheral, serving the story as the female characters serve
the male: fulfilling the roles of housekeepers and
girlfriends, not to mention prostitutes.
On more than one occasion, other men tell Pete that he's the
kind of man they always wanted to be, and he tells them
they're crazy -- they're the real men. He recognizes his
failings, yet he chooses to indulge them. He's a bad husband
and father, and he'd still be a gangster if only the boss had
a little more tolerance for his "softer" side, the side that
wanted to give some poor debtor a couple of days extra to pay
up. And why? Because ordinary life is too boring. Who can
play with a two year old for more than five minutes? Who
wants to eat supper with his wife? He is an attractive
character nonetheless. He has a sense of what is right and is
willing to sacrifice himself for his friends.
The time and place (post-War Washington, DC) were evoked well
and the strands of the story were woven together nicely. I
haven't read another novel set in a multiethnic community
where there were any significant numbers of Greeks; that
aspect was interesting, too. I think I will look for others
by the author, especially those with the word "mystery" on
the jacket (I can't help it, that's my favourite type of
book) -- he really can write. (Question to GP: Should Boyle
be angry after eating a couple of hotdogs [p. 146], or merely
hungry?)
I read two by Dennis Lehane in a row: Sacred and Gone, Baby,
Gone. I really enjoyed them both. Tough characters, tight
plot, sense of humour. Violence, but not too much. I'm
looking forward to reading all the others I can get my hands
on. Patrick Kenzie is appealing and it's a nice change to
find a woman like Angie Gennaro, who can hold her own as a
detective yet is emotionally vulnerable. I hope she's in the
other books of the series.
Karin Montin
-- # 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 : 08 May 2001 EDT