Dave wrote:
> Well, Fast Lane's not a PI book - it's fits really
under psychotic
> noir. The only PI work I ever wrote (until recently)
was a short story
> done more as a joke.
GULP! Would that be the story you wrote for us? And here we
took you seriously...
> About other traditional PI writers - of course, Ken
Bruen's marvelous
> Jack Taylor series. And off the top of my head
there's Michael
> Kortya's Lincoln Perry, Harry Hunsicker's Lee Hnery
Oswald, Michael A.
> Black's Ron Shade series, Jim Winter's Keplar, Harry
Shannon's Mick
> Callahan (although not strictly a PI), and I'm sure
there are dozens
> of others..
You bet. Other up-and-comers and those just bubbling under
the radar include Mike Siverling, Reed Coleman, Jack Bludis,
Michael Kronenwetter, that John Swan guy, Mike Harrison, John
Shannon, Rick Helms, Andrew Klavan and Charlie Huston, and
short story writers like Dave White, Ray Banks, Mike MacLean
and Stephen D. Rogers. These guys all take the genre
seriously enough to keep going, and while popularity of any
genre (or sub-genre) waxes and wanes, there seem to be
plenty
(but never enough) readers to take them seriously as well. So
rumours of the death of the private eye are a little
premature, if you ask me.
As for the notion of the "trench-coated P.I." finally
reaching the end of his rope, that's just ridiculous -- there
haven't been any trench-coated P.I.s for close to forty years
-- or at least not any that weren't intended as parody or
homage. Oh, sure, every now and then some fedora fetishist
pines for the good ol' days, but part of the charm of the
genre has always been its sense of time and place --
Chandler's LA or Ross Macdonald's Southern California just as
much as Spenser's Boston or Pelecanos' D.C.
And anyway, the private eye mythos is surely about far more
than merely what the detective's official occupation is
listed as, as a quick glance at Shamus nominations over the
last few years by the Private Eye Writers of America will
quickly confirm -- or even my own site.
Not that my site is strictly limited to private eyes either,
for that matter, but no matter what their "official"
occupation, I consider folks like Travis McGee (salvage
consultant), pre-license Matt Scudder
(just a guy who does favors for friends) and early Perry
Mason
(criminal defense lawyer) to be private eyes in all but name.
Hell, look at how many alleged cowboy heroes (frequently,
secretly or not) wouldn't know a cow from a cumquat.
If many of today's eyes aren't "eyes" per se, that doesn't
mean the template is falling into disuse. Whatever the
occupational status, guys as diverse as Jack Reacher, Harry
Bosch and Dave Robicheaux easily fall into the guidelines
first set down by Chandler in "The Simple Art of Murder." And
there are plenty of other occupations that can easily offer
candidates to fit into that template: bounty hunters, repo
men, freelance process servers, crime reporters, bodyguards,
corporate troubleshooters, etc. -- and a few hundred loose
cannon police officers who owe way more to Chandler -- or
possibly Jim Thompson and Mickey Spillane -- than they ever
did to Ed McBail or Jack Webb.
All men (and women) who go down those mean streets, blah blah
blah, making trouble their business, not their hobby, driven
not by the authority of law but with something a little more
personal. And let's not forget that even if the P.I. mythos
was originally an American invention, he's long since grown
up and left to see the world, with successful, viable private
eyes continuing to pop up everywhere around the globe.
Kevin Burton Smith AT LAST! The Thrilling Detective Web Site
January 2006 Issue With Weinman, MacLean, The Cheap Thrill
Awards and Detective Fork http://www.thrillingdetective.com
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