Hello all, I'm new to the group and the move to Yahoo seems
like a good oppurtunity to jump in.
A brief introduction - My name is Claus, I'm from good old
Germany, and my favorites are Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence
Block, Charles Willeford, Robert B. Parker, Jean-Patrick
Manchette, Sebastian Japrisot, Jean Claude Izzo, and many
more. Actually, I discover some more classical novels, and I
am disappointed that most of them are out-of-print (in
Germany). Recent reads were Michael Collins, Howard Browne,
J. W. Rider, Shane Stevens, Thomas Adcock, and William
Krasner. Particularly, Krasner was a great discovery. I was
deeply impressed by his novels about Sam Birge and Charley
Hagen. Although not noir in their settings, the novels could
be described as "film noir on a page". The first Birge/Hagen
novel "Walk the Dark Street" (1949) was nominated for the
Edgar Allan Poe Awards/Best First Novel in 1950. Although
there were several positive criticism (listed to the Mystery
Top 10 of the year 1949 by "Newsweek", mentioned in Raymond
Chandler's Favorite Mysteries, and his protagonist Sam Birge
was compared to Maigret by Anthony Boucher in "Ellery Queen´s
Mystery Magazine") this novel as well as the second novel
"The Stag Party" (1957) were not bestselling. Therefore,
Krasner stopped his career as a mystery writer and continued
his work as a free-lance or staff writer for various
scientific and social science magazines and journals. In the
eighties he wrote the third Sam Birge novel "Death of a Minor
Poet" (1984). Charles Willeford characterized this novel as
novelization of 24hrs-investigation day with high literarily
impact. Due to the positive criticism Krasner wrote the
fourth novel "Resort to Murder" (1985). However, these novels
were again not bestselling. As a consequence, Krasner found
no American publisher for his fifth novel "Death, the Dancer"
(1990) which was only published in Germany.
Has anyone else come across the novels about Sam Birge and
Charley Hagen by William Krasner?
Claus
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
--------------------~-->
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/kqIolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 23 Aug 2004 EDT