Bill Hagen wrote: SO BLUE MARBLE has some hard-edged aspects
to it, but is more in the mode of a Buchan (39 Steps)
thriller. The heroine is learning on the
job, and her escapes are not quite believeable. Not quite up
to Ambler standards.
THE FALLEN SPARROW (movie made starring John Garfield) showed
Hughes moving to a male protagonist who has been released
from a Spanish prison (Span. Civl War era) so that he can
lead a lame-footed villain to friends in NYC. Gets inside the
head of someone who is still suffering the trauma of being
imprisoned and has to determine and pursue the murderer of a
friend of his.
I think she's achieved something hard-boiled in that
novel.
RIDE THE PINK HORSE (also a film, starring & directed by
Robert Montgomery) is much better than Blue Marble, with a
gunman named Sailor waiting to confront his old boss in Santa
Fe, during a festival celebrating the casting
out of old bad spirit of winter (Sosobra or something like).
It is definitely hard-boiled, and very dark. It has some
nightmarish qualities, if that's what surreal means. It's
quite interesting in its mixing of Indian, Mexican, and tough
urban (Chicago) perspectives.
IN A LONELY PLACE (also a Nicholas Ray film with Humphrey
Bogart and Gloria Grahame) is possibly her best, about a
writer who may or may not be a serial
killer in LA.
My view of her--which wrote up in a paper, but have never
published--is that
she may be the first major woman writer of noir novels.
Sparrow and Pink Horse were published in 1943-45, as I
remember.
********* Thanks for the excellent information, Bill. Based
on what you and Mark have told me, I think I'll pass on the
SO BLUE MARBLE and read either IN A LONELY PLACE or RIDE THE
PINK HORSE.
miker
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