> But all that actually happens is that Haskell, the
man who gave Al
a
> ride, dies of a heart attack. If somebody who had
given me a ride
> died of a heart attack, I'd call an ambulance. But
Al somehow
manages
> to work out that if he walks away from the car (the
only 'honest'
> course of action he sees as being available to him),
somebody else
> will come along and steal it, and the police will
claim that he
did
> it. So he decides he might as well steal it anyway,
along with
> Haskell's wallet and other belongings. What happens
to Al after
that
> is pretty much inevitable, but he has nobody to
blame but himself.
>
I wasn't trying to argue that the character in DETOUR was not
responsible for what happens to him--just that he was really
clueless about the potential repercussions for his
actions--he's not a professional car thief even if he has
stolen the guys car.
> But the ending is only happy if seen from the
central character's
> perspective. Leonard is extremely critical of the
character. Most
of
> Charles Willeford's novels end with their amoral
narrators
emerging
> triumphant, and these are among the darkest noirs
ever written.
That may be, although I don't remember Leonard's perspective
on the character being that critical. I think my major point,
though, was that because the main character is a professional
soldier with a somewhat shady background, CAT CHASER may be
more in the hardboiled category than the noir category. I'm
not sure who does suffer in the novel, but in Willeford's
work at least plenty of otherwise innocent people do.
Max
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 08 Apr 2005 EDT