I sent this yesterday, but I don't see it on the list so I'm
going to repost it.
Mark asked about the "disappointing Gold Medal" that I just
finished.
**************** Oh, God, Mark. I hate to say. I'm still
healing from the beating I took when I said Vachss's writing
was leftist. ;-)
After hearing about Richard Prather, I had to try something
by him. Rather than pay high dollar for the new versions with
the ugly covers, I hit the jackpot on ebay and got a bunch of
Prather's work wrapped in with some of the newer Mickey
Spillane. I looked through the Prathers and picked out the
oldest one I could find, CASE OF THE VANISHING BEAUTY (1950).
I didn't much care for it. Why? The humor was funny and I
enjoyed that, but it seemed that it sacrificed the tension
and excitement of the plot.
I like a sense of humor in hardboiled and noir. It adds
balance. And I don't mind if they are poking fun at the
genres. Hallas's YOU PLAY THE BLACK AND THE RED COMES UP,
Latimer's SOLOMON'S VINE- YARD, Lochte's SLEEPING DOG, and
Willeford's WILD WIVES all might fall in that category, and I
thought they were all great books, but they all generated and
maintained suspense. Prather seems to just be going through
the motions of a plot in order to parody the genre.
I'm not good at figuring out what a writer is getting at, but
I think Prather might have been parodying a specific plot in
hard- boiled with CASE OF THE VANISHING BEAUTY. It's about a
cult that is nothing more than a criminal front. There was
one part that made me think he had Hammett's DAIN CURSE
specifically in mind, and Prather probably read the Latimer I
mentioned above. He might even have had Teran's GOD IS A
BULLET in mind. Wait a minute. Maybe I'd better check some
publishing dates.
Even though I didn't care a lot for the book, I was still
sorry to see the Gold Medal slowly disintegrate on me while I
read it. It ended up in pieces.
miker
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