Sorry, the last few weeks since that mess in Vegas have seen
me playing travelling companion/bodyguard and publicist to DL
Browne
(AKA Diana Killian) whose new book, HIGH RHYMES AND
MISDEMEANORS, is definitely NOT hardboiled.
Unfortunately, I'm a little behind on stuff here, so please
bear with me...
Richard wrote:
>(Stewart Sterling's) known
>character was Fire Marshall Pedley with a career that
began in the pulps,
>jumped to hardback novels in the 1940s and continued
into the 60s. Art said
>Sterling also had a series featuring a "house dick"
by the name of Gil Vine.
He also wrote about Don Cadee, security chief for a swanky
Manhattan department store, as Spencer Dean. These were
pretty good too, fast-paced, clever mysteries, and again with
what seemed like an authentic background.
And Mark chipped in with the link to THE LAST TESTAMENT OF
ROSS MACDONALD. Thanks, Mark. What a great book it would have
made. But it makes me wonder -- if some publisher did pull a
Parker and have a contemporary mystery author complete this
book, working from whatever notes are left, who should it
be?
I think Parker did a serviceable job on POODLE SPRINGS,
especially given that even Chandler himself might not have
been able to pull it off (Marlowe married?), but who could do
Macdonald justice? Although I think all Ross' children are
out there playing his licks, I wonder who could actually get
Archer right these days? Could anyone? Compared to Archer,
doing Marlowe was a cinch. But to capture the powerful but
convoluted plotting and aching sense of loss that Macdonald
did so well? Although a lot of people seem to work in the
fields Macdonald first sowed, few have ever tried to capture
his voice, so I'm stuck wondering who COULD do it. Thomas
Cook? Margaret Atwood?
And Joy asked, referring to SHOOTING ELVIS by Robert
Eversz:
> I loved this book, Miker, as have all the other
women I've heard mention it.
>Women even cite him as proof that, yes, a male author
can write a real
>female character. Yet male readers seem to hate this
series.
> Have any male rare birds loved this book? Have any
female rare birds
>hated it?
I haven't read that one, but I reviewed his newest, BURNING
GARBO and I liked it a great deal. In fact, I liked Nina
better than the book itself, so I'll be working my way back
through the rest of the series. I love the way Nina comes
across as the pissed-off, trouble-prone bastard love child of
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Joan Jett.... The
review, "Have Nose Stud, Will Travel" is at
http://www.januarymagazine.com/crfiction/burninggarbo.html
As for men writing women and women writing men, it's not even
something I considered in my review, because I thought we'd
all outgrown that tedious argument. The truth is that it's
not about whether the writer sits up or sits down to pee,
it's about whether they're a good writer or not. Some folks
can't even write good characters of their own gender.
--
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site Last chance. The P.I. Trivia Challenge is waiting. http://www.thrillingdetective.com -- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # 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/ .
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