RARA-AVIS: Ramblin' Heroes

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 29 Sep 2001


Carrie,

Re your question below:

> Here's a question: I've often found that writers who
> are very adept at
> writing about a certain place seem to stumble when
> the heroes leave it. . .

> So - can you come up with any books where the author
> takes the detective out
> of his/her "natural habitat" and really succeeds at
> it?

You answer the question in your very next post. Dashiell Hammett's RED HARVEST takes the Op out of the San Francisco Bay Area and into a rural mining town in the Pacific Northwest. I think it's one of the best PI books ever written.

The Op also leaves The City in the short stories
"Corkscrew" (a sort of short story warm-up for HARVEST), "This King Business" (in which he travels to a foreign country), and in the last half of the novel THE DAIN CURSE, which is set in a resort spot far north of the Bay Area, and he's successfull (IMHO) in all of the locales.

JIM DOHERTY

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