Mr. Smith said, "There were so many great series launched in
the seventies that were really hitting their stride about
then. Pronzini, Parker, Block, Hansen and the like had
already demonstrated there were new ways to use the genre,
and in their wake (and perhaps at least partly inspired by
them, or at least by Parker's commercial success) a whole
bunch of new voices (Grafton, Paretsky, Mosley, Burke, et al)
entered the genre in the early eighties." (Mosley's DEVIL IN
A BLUE DRESS was published in 1990, though!) I'd add James
Ellroy and Loren Estleman.
Mr. So, I noticed, runs a mailing list called DetecToday,
"Dedicated to the new wave of mystery writers (male or
female, mid-1980s - present) carrying PI tradition into the
future. We also discuss offshoots of the hard-boiled, loner,
cynical attitude popularized by fictional PIs. Featured
authors include Crais, Lehane, Coben, Connelly, Rozan, and
Seranella." What, if anything, have they decided over there
about hardboiled detectives in the 1980s? Where did they come
from? Where did they go?
I read LABYRINTH (1980), by Bill Pronzini, the sixth Nameless
Detective mystery. One thing that struck me about the book
was the self-conscious anachronism of the detective. He sits
around reading pulp magazines, sarcastically quoting
newspaper articles that call him the last Frisco lone-wolf
private eye, and tells reporters that his secretary, Effie
Perrine, will get back to them. I can't remember the later
Namelesses I've read, but I presume this just gets stronger.
Loren Estleman's Amos Walker is out of his time, and later in
the series he acknowledges it. This self-reflexivity might
bother some people, but I like it.
Was it in the late seventies/early eighties when the split
happened, people realized the contemporary hardboiled dick
was a fantasy, and they either had to modernize him or write
historical novels? Ellroy ended up going the historical
route; Paretsky modernized and made it a her, but I don't
think her stuff is actually hardboiled. Some writers, like
Willeford, went to police stories--the police are the only
ones you can take seriously as investigating murders
now.
One more thing: it's interesting watching technology change
through the decades. In LABYRINTH, Nameless recently gave up
on his answering service
(like Lew Archer always used) and has an answering machine.
He's constantly checking on it and using pay phones to call
people who are never in their office. Fifty years earlier,
the Continental Op had a suspect whose alibi was that he was
in New York the day before and he couldn't get back to Frisco
in less than 18 hours ... by airplane. Twenty years later,
everyone's cat has a cell phone and technology has made many
old plots and situations impossible.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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