Bill wrote:
"How heavily edited is THE FIFTH GRAVE? I read SOLOMON'S
VINEYARD and thought it was great, though that was quite a
while ago and I can't remember anything about it now."
After reading Chandler, Ross Macdonald and what little
Hammett was in print in the mid-'70s (the novels and two
short story collections), I found a used bookstore that
specialized in mysteries, particularly hardboiled, X Marks
the Spot in Silver Spring, MD. X, as the proprietor was
known, turned me on to other vintage PI novelists,
particularly John Evans, and sold me a few of the out of
print Hammett short story collections, Dell mapbacks and
Mercurys. He also sold me a copy of the Mercury edition of
Fifth Grave. He warned me it was nothing compared to the
original, Solomon's Vineyard, but that was pretty much
impossible to find at the time.
Fifth Grave did nothing for me. It didn't even seem to make
sense. I think some plot got cut along with the "smut" (not
that smutty by today's standards). The couple of Latimer's
Bill Cranes I read were better, but I still couldn't
understand his huge rep. I finally got it when Foul Play
Press reissued Solomon's Vineyard, though I can't remember
much about it now, either.
I still have my copies of both. One of these days I should do
a direct comparison.
Mark
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