RARA-AVIS: Re: RARA-AVIS 20 years on...

From: Graham Powell ( bleekerbooks@hotmail.com)
Date: 27 May 2003


>Will we be longing for the good old days of Robert Parker?

Some of us long for those days already. More seriously, it looks like crime fiction is moving away from private eyes, who dominated the 80s and on into the 90s, and back towards stories about criminals and other assorted lowlifes. It seems to me that mystery reades' tastes tend to go back and forth from ourtight hero worship (the 40s and the cult of Marlowe) to fiction that deglamorizes crime and criminals (the 50s and paperback originals - leaving aside Mike Hammer, of course).

Just my opinion, but recent crime fiction also seems a little less pretentious than what's been common over the past decade. Of course, many of the writers I admire have been writing for a decade or more, but now a simpler style seems to be gaining in popularity.

Graham
-------------- http://www.BleekerBooks.com

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