Bill Crider wrote:
I haven't actually read much of Gruber's fiction. I have
SIMON LASH, but I've never even looked inside the covers. I
also have THE GIFT HORSE and THE FRENCH KEY. I should try
those one of these days.
Bill, et al, don't hesitate in sampling Gruber's fiction,
especially the Johnny Fletcher-Sam Cragg novels of which "The
French Key" is the first and one of the best. They aren't
particularly hardboiled or noir, though the protags are
essentially two guys on the con. (A French key is the soft
metal key a hotel manager breaks off in the lock of a room
when its occupants have gone beyond the limits of their
credit.) Gruber was something of a student of Americana and,
as I recall, each novel in the series finds the two guys
taking on a specific American enterprise (shoe manufacturing,
comic strip creating, pop music, etc.) He's more interested
in the raffish element than the grim. Their Vegas episode
("The Honest Dealer") has several dark elements. Gruber's
Simon Lash novels are more hardboiled, but not quite as
entertaining.
Dick Lochte
-- # 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 : 17 Feb 2003 EST