Kim wrote:
>Have you read his Frank Keller short stories,
anthologized in _Hit >Man_
>andthis year's _Hit List_? I finished the first one
last month,
> >andimmediately put the latter on reserve at the
library. With the
> >character of Frank Keller, Block has taken the
erstwhile moral
> >ambivalence of Scudder and magnified it to the
40th degree.
I just read "Time to Murder and Create," which is either the
second or the third Scudder book (it was written 3rd and
published 2nd or vice versa, I can't remember what the
author's note said), and I was struck by the similarity
between Scudder's unusual mission and some of Keller's
assignments. Block keeps Scudder in the gray areas, though;
things are more black and white for Keller, though his moral
code is not really a conventional one. I love the Keller
stories, particularly "answers to soldier" and "Keller's
therapy." The latter is the first example of the now-cliche
"bad guy and psychiatrist" motif that I know of - did anybody
do it before? Keller's certainly a spiritual ancestor of Tony
Soprano, anyway. And the film "Grosse Pointe Blank" is
basically a Brat Pack take on the Keller stories (make the
characters young and cute, put in some 80s music and a love
story), though I'm guessing Block didn't get a credit.
I didn't care for the later episodes in "Hit Man" as much or
for "Hit List"
- which is more of a novel than a series of shorts, although
with some episodic qualities. Enjoyable enough but after a
point it seemed like there was only so far to take the
character. Incidentally, I thought Keller's given names were
"John Patrick"; does he have a different one in some of the
earlier stories?
Carrie
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