Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: The Marlowe Paradigm

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 05 Dec 2002


Re my recent post:

> And a surprisingly large number of non-American
> writers who wrote PI stories, such as . . . Peter
> Cheney . . . used
> American characters and settings precisely because
> the
> PI story was so closely identified with the US.

Actually, now that I think about it (thanks to Karin's recent post), Slim Callaghan, Cheney's most frequently used PI character, was English. And, while Cheney created a host of other PI characters, I'm not sure ANY of them was American. His most famous character, Lemmy Caution, was a Yank, but Lemmy was a cop, not a PI.

However, while Cheney might not be an example, the point still stands. One could even make the case that Chandler, who made the "American-ness" of the hard-boiled PI one of the immutable points in the
"Marlowe Pardigm," was actually a Brit since he was raised and educated in Blighty and served the King, rather than the Stars and Stripes, in the Great War.

JIM DOHERTY

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