RARA-AVIS: The opening question

From: Juri Nummelin ( juri.nummelin@pp.inet.fi)
Date: 29 Jun 2005


I had a question about the opening sentence few days back and was wondering if it was something by Raoul Whitfield or Frederick Nebel. I was also thinking that the quote was in Ron Goulart's pulp anthology "The Hardboiled Dicks".

No one came up with a definite answer. I was lucky enough to find the book in my shelves and found the quote - but no attribution to any author. It's in the introduction. Goulart writes:

"For one thing there was the infinite number of ways they had of grabbing your attention and pulling you into action. Which this assortment of opening books will show:

[Then come openings of "The Dain Curse", "The Red Wind" and several others I don't recognize {and I'm a bit uncertain about Dain}. Then comes this:]

I dropped to one knee and fired twice."

Goulart never says where these openings come from. He says they are from "books", but there are clearly more short stories in it
(including one Sam Spade story, with the line "My name is Ronald Ames") than actual books.

Now, does anyone recognize the sentence and can tell where it's from?

Juri

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 : 29 Jun 2005 EDT