Just finished a whole lot of classics. Here are some
impressions, starting with the most recently finished:
The Red Right Hand - Joel Townsley Rogers Interesting.
Classic of the unreliable narration. Reminded me a lot of
Fredric Brown, especially his more surreal and fantastic
novels such as Night of the Jabberwock and The Screaming
Mimi. This one caught my attention because it had been
published in both the Blue Murder series and as a Green Door
mystery (in the 60s). It was well worth reading. I hadn't
previously heard too much about the book or Rogers. It's one
of the few I've read that takes place during the second world
war and makes quite a few references to life on the homefront
at the time.
A Touch of Death - Charles WIlliams What little I've read by
Charles Williams has been great so when Hard Case Crime
reprinted a book of his I snapped it up and devoured it. Wow.
The best book I've read by a great writer. Having read most
of the HCC reprints I would say this one was the best. It was
even better than Hell Hath No Fury which Black Lizard
reprinted. Touch of Death is perhaps the perfect Gold Medal
PBO. It has all the elements of a great GM-style plot. Lots
of rye whisky and double-crossing dames--real femme
fatales--murder, arson, it's got it all. If it can be said
that there is a GM formula, this is it at it's quintessential
best, right up there with Web of Murder and Black Wings. If
anyone else has a better candidate for the perfect Gold Medal
crime book, I'd like to hear about it.
Moon in the Gutter - David Goodis I love David Goodis and,
after reading about half of his books, have yet to read a bad
one. I also happen to know the neighborhoods he writes about
having lived in Philadelphia for a long time. This was
typical Goodis fare, complete with the dichotomy between the
good woman and the evil woman. Goodis was the real poet of
the gutter of the Gold Medal line.
The Simple Art of Murder - Raymond Chandler In a short story
collection such as this, you really can see Chandler
improving his craft through-out the 30s. The same can be said
about his novels. I think he really hit his stride with Lady
in the Lake and he just got better from there.
Jeff
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Jun 2006 EDT