RARA-AVIS: Robert Martin/Browne/Twilight

From: Kevin Burton Smith ( kvnsmith@colba.net)
Date: 11 Jun 2001


Wild Bill Crider wrote:

>And speaking of Chandler pastiches, does anybody remember a
>writer named Robert Martin? I thought some of his early
>books were about as good as the ones by Browne/Evans, though
>later on the books went way downhill.

Ah! Robert Martin! I really enjoyed the ones I've managed to find over the years. His ClevelandP.I., JIM BENNETT, was a rarity in detective fiction in the fifties in that he was a happily-married man. Thomas Dewey, Bart Spicer and James M. Fox are about the only other writers of this period that seemed to stray from the whole lone wolf/PI thing. His long-suffering wife was Sandy, was his former secretary.

>>>There's a prefatory apology by Browne in the reprint
(for being derogatory about lesbians).

Is there? Well, that seems pretty classy. Better to leave the text and apologize in an intro, than to change it, and pretend it was never said. I must say, though it's been years since I read it, that what really bothered me wasn't the derogation so much as the fact that some of the assumptions about lesbians were (and are) factually, boneheadedly wrong (but probably more or less accepted as general common wisdon at the time).

And Dick wrote:

>Anybody wanting to see Paul Newman really portray Lew Archer should rent a
>copy of "Twilight." It's not the actual character, but close enough.

Yes. You, Bill, me -- it seems a lot of people actually liked Twilight, after all. And add Lorten Estleman to that list. In the same conversation Bill Denton mentioned, he admitted he quite enjoyed Twilight as well.

-- 
Kevin
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