--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, JIM DOHERTY
<jimdohertyjr@y...> wrote:
> 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
>
Thanks Jim! One of the pleasures of this list is the
discovery of new writers to seek out or unheard of books by
writers I enjoy. I had missed out on the Blacke/Booker books
but will certainly check them out based on your
description.
You also inspired me to pick up my copy of ATROPOS. The first
sentence is a great hardboiled hook:
"He had expected it to be horrible--burning the house,
burning Pina-- but it was really sort of pretty."
Richard Moore
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Dec 2004 EST