Jesse wrote:
"Its an amazing novel in no small part because like the movie
Chinatown it has a killer ending."
I haven't read I Am Legend, but you are so right about
Chinatown's ending. I saw it again just last night, on a big
screen. Damn, it is one fine movie. And Polanski certainly
knew what he was doing when he changed Towne's original
ending.
Related to that, I was watching Karen Sisco a week or two
ago, the TV show based on Elmore Leonard's character. (By the
way, I recommend the show when it comes back in the spring --
it does a good job of capturing Leonard's twisted humor and
Carla Gugino is one hardboiled dame.) A woman hired Karen's
PI father to get the goods on her cheating husband. Her name
was Mrs. Mulraney. I knew immediately that the guy was not
her husband and she was setting him up. Her name was just too
close to Chinatown's Mrs. Mulray to be a coincidence.
Have others had that experience, that catching a reference
clued you in early on something? I thought it was kind of
cool in the TV show, but it was just a minor subplot, so it
didn't affect the suspense of the main story. However, it
annoyed me in Ace Atkin's Leavin' Trunk Blues
-- any blues fan (which assumedly applies to a lot of
Atkins's readers) knows who really killed Billy Lyons.
By the way, I'm pretty sure I've already recommended Cecil
Brown's Stagolee Shot Billy, but let me mention it again. He
traces the true circumstances the murder ballad is based
upon, then goes on to analyze why this, one of five murders
in East St Louis on Christmas Eve 1895, became myth while the
other four were quickly forgotten. Fascinating read (even if
some of the proofing and editing could have been a little bit
better).
Mark
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