Re: RARA-AVIS: Is Carroll John Daly a guy or girl?

From: Michael Robison ( zspider@gte.net)
Date: 29 Aug 2002


Brian Evankovich said:
> Mike, I'd be interested in hearing your comments on "Snarl" when the time
> comes. I couldn't finish it, for several reasons, least of which was the
> fact that I had no idea what the heck was going on or why.

********* I can think of a number of reasons you wouldn't like Daly, and almost no reasons why you would. Although I'm not overly familiar with the term or what it means, I see Daly as hardcore "pulp". Action and a fast-moving plot are a priority, character development is not. And the character that is developed, Race Williams, is, as Mario might say, lacking in subtlety.

I pretty much understand what is going on in SNARL, but I can empathize with your confusion... I'm reading Faulkner's SANCTUARY, and I had a hell of a time figuring out was going on for the first 50 pages.

Part of the juice for me in SNARL is seeing the influence Daly had on Spillane. I'm learning all the time. We were busy beating up on Spillane earlier this year and somebody stated that the Hammer novels were sig- significant because it was the first time a cop had a significant part in a private investigator novel. I would argue about that now. Looks to me like Daly's Coglin gets the prize.

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 : 29 Aug 2002 EDT