In the 1987-1990 W. Glenn Duncan published 6 private-eye
novels about a Dallas p.i. named Rafferty. The books were
issued under the Gold Medal imprint. Here are the
titles:
Rafferty's Rules Rafferty: Last Seen Alive Rafferty: Wrong
Place, Wrong Time Rafferty: Poor Dead Cricket Rafferty:
Cannon's Mouth Rafferty: Fatal Sisters
These six books wouldn't have been out of place in the Gold
Medal line in the 1950s. They're good, solid p.i. stories
(heavy on some of the procedural details that others leave
out), and occasionally they're even better than that. The
title of the first book refers to the series gimmick,
Rafferty being a guy who often quotes his rules for living
and/or detective work ("Rule number seven: Every client will
lie to you sooner or later.")
The books were obviously influenced by Robert B. Parker's
novels about Spenser in both content (the psycho sidekick's
name is "Cowboy") and style. Here's an excerpt from the one I
picked up to read for Southwest Month, Poor Dead
Cricket:
"There were three of them, including Hadley, and they were
standing. I was alone and seated.
"But I was me and they were them, so I made the odds about
even."
The story is kind of a riff on the Karen Silkwood story, but
it has some nice turns. And there's a scene at the Alamo that
I liked. Reading the book won't change your life, but it's
well-done entertainment, a thoroughly professional job.
Nothing wrong with that.
Bill Crider
-- # 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/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Apr 2004 EDT