Re: RARA-AVIS: Jim Doherty's Favorites

From: Al Guthrie ( allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk)
Date: 01 Oct 2002


From: "JIM DOHERTY" < jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com>
> NIGHTMARE IN MANHATTAN by Thomas Walsh
> SIGNAL 32 by McKinlay Kantor
> LAST SEEN WEARING . . . by Hillary Waugh
> GIDEON'S WEEK by J.J. Marric
> THE HECKLER by Ed McBain
> THE BAIT by Dorothy Uhnak
> THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
> LISTENING WOMAN by Tony Hillerman
> ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY by John Wainwright
> THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS by Thomas Harris

Have to agree with Jim on THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN.

My own police procedural month experience was disappointing on the whole, which is why I haven't posted much. But, for what it's worth, and briefly, here's what I read:

Jerome Charyn: MARILYN THE WILD - Don't know to what extent this is a procedural. It certainly features cops, but it never grabbed my attention. Couldn't finish it.

John Wainwright: DIG THE GRAVE AND LET HIM LIE - Jim claims that Wainwright
"doesn't belt it out of the park every time he steps up to bat." This was a fresh-air shot (don't know the baseball terminology, sorry).

Ed McBain: KILLER'S CHOICE - One of the early 87th precinct novels. This one introduces Cotton Hawes. Not one of McBain's better efforts (spoiled by featuring, as a key witness, a young child with a ridiculously advanced vocabulary).

Disillusioned at this point I returned to an old favourite: William McIlvanney: LAIDLAW - McIlvanney's writing reeks of authenticity. He writes about people and places with the assuredness you might expect of a former Whitbread Award winner (DOCHERTY). Evocative, realistic, brutal, tender and unsentimental - and hardboiled by most definitions. In particular, his hard men are magnificently unromanticized. The story: the raped and murdered body of a young girl is found in a Glasgow park. Laidlaw, assisted by DC Harkness, is given free rein in his search for killer. A race against time develops as two other forces, neither benign nor legal, join the hunt for the killer.

Finally, Alex Gray: NEVER SOMEWHERE ELSE: Gray's first novel (a police procedural) which I was led to believe might be hardboiled. I was wrong. The appearance of the word "grisly" repeated three times in the first few pages set the tone. Not a tone that works for me.

Al

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