A Toronto mini-chain of bookstores called Book City
celebrated their 25th birthday this year by getting two local
mystery writers to collaborate on a short novel called MY
BROTHER'S KEEPER. Eric Wright's Inspector Charlie Salter and
Howard Engel's Benny Cooperman meet up while investigating a
missing doctor. Neither is hardboiled--the Salter stories are
excellent at describing Toronto and are restrained
procedurals done in the classic old Ontario way; Cooperman's
a soft-boiled private eye from a small city south of Lake
Ontario, which is to St. Catharines what Isola is to New
York--but something familiar pops up in the book.
In one of the Cooperman chapters, Benny relates this (and
it's Benny who's hazy on the details, Engel certainly knows
them):
| Like the guy in the Hammett book, THE MALTESE FALCON.
Forget his name,
| but he ran away from his life after nearly being killed by
a falling
| grand piano or safe or something. Changed his life, left
his wife,
| kids, job, house, car, and bolted. When Sam Spade caught up
with him a
| couple of years later, he'd created his former life all
over again,
| like God did for Job. Seems after the first big shock that
woke him up
| to the reality of his ordinary life, he got used to the
fact that grand
| pianos or safes don't fall out of the sky every day. So he
slipped
| back into his rut, a different rut, as comfortable as the
first one.
I mention it so we can keep track of all the spots Mr.
Flitcraft shows up. He gets around.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 02 Nov 2001 EST