Fellow cop and Rara-Avian Charlie Shafer mentioned Holton
here a few years ago, but he's never been talked about in any
depth at Rara-Avis.
Second-generation Chicago cop Holton was one of the first
African-American police officers to write cop fiction (not
quite THE first; that title goes to LAPD Detective Lieutenant
Jesse Kimbrough whose semi-autobiographical novel about
prohibition-era law enforcement in Southern California,
DEFENDER OF THE ANGELS, was first published in 1969).
His novels about CPD Chief of Detectives Larry Cole are very
unusual as police procedurals go. You get all the gritty,
realistic details you expect from a sub-genre in which
technical accuracy is the whole point, but you also get the
kind of red-blooded melodrama you'd be more likely to expect
in a Fu Manchu novel.
Imagine DRAGNET as a breathless Republic movie serial, and
you've got a pretty good idea of the kind of what a Larry
Cole novel is like. Along with all the detailed descriptions
of police work, you'll find mad scientists, tricked out James
Bond-style gadgets, non-stop cliff-hanging action from
beginning to end, even the occasional suggestion of the
supernatural. INIDANA JONES with a badge. Holton himself
described them as "less police stories than adventure stories
with police."
Those of you who are somewhat anal about reading series books
in order might have a hard time with the Cole books, because
they weren't published in chronological order according to
the characters career
(somewhat like Horatio Hornblower whose a 40-is commodore in
one book and a teen-aged midshipman in the next).
In chronological (but NOT publication order) the Cole novels
are VIOLENT CRIMES, CRIMINAL ELEMENT, CHICAGO BLUES, WINDY
CITY, PRESUMED DEAD, RED LIGHTNING, TIME OF THE ASSASSINS,
THE LEFT HAND OF GOD, and THE DEVIL'S SHADOW. They're all
enjoyable, but my personal favorite (at the moment) is WINDY
CITY, in which Cole enlists the aid of members of the Midwest
Chapter of Mystery Writers of America to trap two serial
killers who are apparently using a mystery novel as a
blueprint.
Holton passed away in 2001, much too young. He was something
of a mentor of mine (he mentored a lot of hopeful writers),
and I miss him quite a bit.
JIM DOHERTY
__________________________________________________ Do you
Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com
-- # 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 : 19 Sep 2002 EDT