Richard,
Re your comments on Bill DeAndrea:
> 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.
The hardest-boiled novels Bill ever wrote were a damned fine
series of spy novels about a super-agent whose name changed
in every book. He went by
"Clifford Driscoll" in the first book, and that's generally
how he's referred to (in the same way that Len Deighton's
nameless agent is called "Harry Palmer" because of the
movies).
The Driscoll novels, which have a very Spillane-like view of
the Soviet Union, are CRONUS, SNARK, AZRAEL, and ATROPOS.
Interestingly, each of them, while having all the thrills and
derring-do you expect from an espionage novel, are also
fair-play whodunits. One
(actually two) of Bill's favorite writers was Ellery Queen,
and he had the same respect for playing fair in the puzzles
he constructed that Queen did.
For those of you who like westerns, Bill's last two novels
were a kind of frontier take on what he called
"the Nero Wolfe paradigm," a brillian, but sedentary
detective, whose legwork is performed by a partner who
regards the great man with an irreverent respect. The Wolfe
figure was crippled former US Marshal Lobo Blacke who becomes
wealthy when a book of his memoirs becomes a best-seller and
uses his money to buy a newspaper in a Wyoming town. His
"Archie" was Quinn Booker, a writer from the East who was
Blacke's
"ghost" collaborator on the autobiography, and who comes out
West to be his star reporter.
The Blacke/Booker books are WRITTEN IN FIRE and FATAL ELIXER.
The second book was published posthumously.
Aside from everything else that can be said about Bill
DeAndrea, he was an extraordinarily nice, decent man.
JIM DOHERTY
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail
- Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
--------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads.
Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for
free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/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 : 03 Dec 2004 EST