>mvs says:
Sam Spade flirts ironically with the murderous vixen, if they
stretch your neck or i'll be waiting etc. the bad guys are on
the lam with the evidence in the cops' hands and Sam Spade is
free, his honor and ethics reaffirmed. That's as upbeat as I
can think of, and Maltese Falcon seems by acclamation to be
an avatar for hardboiledness.
The color guy, McDonald, the vato on the boat with the wise
side-kick in florida, always wins, the issues wrapped up all
nice and tight. Seems upbeat
to me.
Maybe I don't know what "upbeat" means. Am I
unsyncopated?
*****************************
sam spade gets the crook, but he's got a dead partner, and
unless i read it wrong, he had developed feelings for the
vixen beyond hate. to put her away hurt him.
i've read two jd mcdonald's. in _the deep blue goodbye_, he
kicks the bad guy's butt in a harrowing ending, but the sweet
lady that travis felt sorry for and tried to help is dead.
and travis has recovered darn little of the gems. in _dress
her in indigo_, he actually finds the girl that was thought
dead to be alive. wonderful ending? not really. she's a drug
addicted zombie, and dried out she's mean and nasty and
resentful towards her crippled father who never gave a damn
for her before anyway.
i haven't read the other two you mentioned.
i am a rookie of hardboiled, but the trend i see is that any
victory at the end is fleeting and bittersweet at best. my
guess is that hardboiled doesn't make it to the oprah book-
of-the-month club.
miker
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 21 Jan 2002 EST