I've just begun reading Pelecanos's Hard Revolution, so I had
to laugh about
"too much driving around Washington listening to music." I
enjoy this sort of wallowing around in the long ago, but I
might not, if I hadn't already read enough of his books to
know that he's setting the scene and we will, indeed, be
going somewhere.
I've no doubt said here before that I
dislike the Spenser books, because of all the standing around
cooking, the vapid Susan, and the unpersuasive deployment of
a psycho sidekick. For a long time, there wasn't much else
readily available in the PI field but these and Nero Wolfe
reprints, so I have read most of the early ones.
I had the same reaction to the White
Trilogy that you did.
I've probably also written here that
John D. MacDonald reads like Hugh Hefner writing detective
stories and expressed my disappointment in the lurid-covered
pbo's you all persuade me to read every now and then. Even
Goodis, who has his good points, drove me nuts with his
world-class piano player who had a penchant for street
brawls. I get hung up when the literal facts don't work for
me, which is also why I threw my first and only Lee Childs at
the wall after a few chapters. Joy the iconoclast http://badattitudes.com/MT/
William Denton asked:
> Are there any of the major (or minor) hardboiled and
noir writers you
> don't like, even though everyone else seems to? I
know a number of folks
> on the list aren't impressed by John D. MacDonald's
Travis McGee books or
> most of his others. I was saying earlier that Ken
Bruen's early books
> disappointed me, and a while back I gave away a
Victor Gischler without
> finishing it.
>
> I think we all agree that Dan J. Marlowe's later
books in the Earl Drake
> series are, as the critics say, crappy. Some people
find recent James
> Ellroy unreadable, and some people find all of
Ellroy unreadable. Robert
> S. Parker's last decade or two seems to fare badly
against his earlier
> books--I wouldn't know, I gave up on him years
ago.
>
> Do any of you think Chandler is drivel or James M.
Cain was no good?
> Anyone repulsed by Jim Thompson? Given up on
Pelecanos because there's
> too much driving around Washington listening to
music?
>
> Speak up if you have a long-simmering dislike of a
well-respected author
> and you want to get it off your chest. The rest of
us may not understand
> it, but we won't mind.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 29 Jun 2006 EDT