--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, JIM DOHERTY
<jimdohertyjr@y...> wrote:
> Spillane's influence is also manifested in all the
PBO
> PI writers who got big in the '50's like Richard
S.
> Prather, Frank Kane, Stephen Marlowe, etc., all
of
> whom showed a right-wing bias, and most of whom had
a
> tendency to get involved in cases involving
Commie
> spies.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
I think Spillane's most immediate impact was indeed on the
PBO writers of the 1950s. It was in those Signet paperback
editions that Spillane sold like wildfire. Between them
Spillane and Erskine Caldwell spawned scores of PBO
imitators. While I will make the caveat that Frank Kane's
first Johnny Liddell novel came out in 1947 the same debut
year as Mike Hammer, the general statement stands true. Even
regarding Liddell, he was likely much changed and longer-
lived because of the Hammer novels. Harry Whittington would
never have earned the title of the King of the PBOs if
Spillane had not created the market.
To me the best one volume reference on the mystery is the
late William DeAndrea's Edgar-winning Encyclopedia Mysteriosa
(Prentice Hall 1994). I don't always agree with him (for
example he cares nothing for James Crumley) but he is always
thought-provoking. His view of Spillane is somewhat higher
than mine but I relay a portion of it here because I think
Bill has some real insights into Spillane's popularity and
the late 1940s to 1950s era that spawned him.
DeAndrea wrote: "Spillane's Mike Hammer, sprung on America in
the late 1940s, packed enough of a jolt to electrify a
war-jaded public. In an increasingly unsteady world, when
allies were becoming enemies and vice versa, Spillane's
rock-solid depiction of a world where good and evil were
sharply defined, and (eventually) identifiable, was
reassuring when a more polite writer's wouldn't be. His prose
is lean and spare and authentically tough, something that
writers like Raymond Chandler or Ross Macdonald never
achieved. His books inspired the paperback original boom of
the 1950s, making some writers' entire careers
possible."
By the way, DeAndrea was a very good writer who could write
them tough or write them funny and earned two Edgars for his
fiction to go with the one he won for this book. Sadly, he
died at a quite young age of cancer.
Richard Moore
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