- --- Carrie Pruett <
pruettc@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Incidentally, I'm not a particularly big fan of
any
>of the "female PI"
>writers (aside from Lehane, since Angie's
as
>important to his books as
>Patrick is)
>Nice to see someone finally agrees with me on this!
:)
>I've often said that Lehane's Angie is the only
female
>PI I've ever really bought as both a woman and
an
>investigator.
Yeah, I think Angie's great. I had a little trouble with her
in the first book, as the abused spouse, but in retrospect
it's really the husband and not Angie who is poorly developed
(I think Lehane realized that and expanded
- to some extent totally redid - the character in the second
book).
Reminds me of another comment I meant to make a while ago re:
professionalism of the PI. One of the things I *love* about
"A Drink before the war" is that, at the end of the book,
Patrick and Angie get paid and they go to the mall. I can't
remember what they buy but they are fairly extraneous items.
Usually when money is mentioned in a PI story, it's either
because the PI is worried about paying the bills, or the PI
charges high rates and is consequently pretty wealthy (can
you imagine Elvis Cole hurting for money?) Patrick and Angie
aren't on the verge of losing their homes, but they're not
rolling in dough either (OK, there is the Porsche thing with
Patrick, but I think he says at one point that he bought the
parts and put it together himself over a lot of years).
Anyway, for some reason I really liked the "Okay, the city
went up in flames, but on the other hand we got paid so let's
go to the Gap" thing. It didn't come across as shallow, just
pragmatic.
*****************
"Is that what you do for a living?" she asked. "Find
folks?"
"Sometimes," I said. "Other times I just look."
-James Crumley, "The Last Good Kiss"
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