Jim Doherty wrote: What strikes me as particularly remarkable
is that the Cold War seems much more prevalent in '50s HB
than WW2 was in '40s crime fiction.
********* I have barely scratched the surface of the genre in
the 40s and 50s, but I was surprised how little WWII figured
into the 40s books I read. Although casual reference in
background material is inevitable, the war seemed almost not
to have happened.
There were two books in which war figured prominently,
Hemingway's FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, and Ross Mac- Donald's
THE DARK TUNNEL. Hemingway's book is about the Spanish Civil
War which, near as I can tell, was a dress rehearsal for
WWII. I'm not real sure if I con- sider this book hardboiled,
though. Hemingway went on to write A FAREWELL TO ARMS, which
was a WWII novel.
MacDonald's book was a spy venture on the hallowed USA home
turf, with vivid flashback scenes of Nazi Germany. It starts
with two characters attempting to join up and both are on the
draft board for the local university. The plot involves
thwarting a Nazi spy ring.
Although I know it's out there, I have yet to run into very
much Cold War stuff in the 50s. Fleming's CASINO ROYALE is
the only one so far.
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 : 24 Jan 2003 EST