James Sallis -- THE LONG LEGGED FLY
I'd searched up and down for this book for quite awhile until
I finally found it lurking in a dark corner of a
not-very-good used bookstore. Not bad, a decent stab at an
arthouse PI story -- "arthouse" here meaning something out of
Bobbie Ann Mason or Raymond Carver. It's a straight-up novel
of character with only incidental detection: we follow the
protag. through the years, sometimes succeeding, sometimes
failing. People come in and go out of his life, his fortunes
rise and fall. Quietly and often beautifully written. Suffers
a bit at the very end from too anxious an attempt to Wrap It
All Together, but otherwise worth the search.
(I'd like to compare sometime Moseley's ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED,
ALWAYS OUTGUNNED. I haven't read the book but I remember the
HBO movie, which I liked a lot, and it had a similar sort of
structure.)
Charles Williams -- A TOUCH OF DEATH
I would buy most of the Hard Cases out of sheer brand
loyalty, probably, but it helps that they're finding and
republishing such gems. The only real flaw here is a somewhat
substantial one: the story is, in it's broad outlines, very
old wine. If you know this genre at all you'll know exactly
how it ends up, and that does hurt things a bit, especially
near the end. If you can let that pass, though, you'll have
the pleasure of Williams's style, which is as brisk and fresh
as ever. Plus Williams manages to work two minor twists and
one superb one in the book, a very hard thing to do
especially with this kind of concept. Highly
recommended.
doug
Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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