Re: RARA-AVIS: Hard-Boiled Series Characters...Looking for Recommendations

From: David Wright ( dwright333@yahoo.com)
Date: 18 Feb 2007


The 'soft' call on McCone is certainly a fair cop. I'll second the Himes recommendation, especially if you like it really dark - sometimes disturbingly so - those're really great and original, and you can get them in three omnibus volumes from a UK/CAN supplier. Ditto Bruen, whose Jack Taylors are wonderful Beckett Irish - down in the gutter looking at the stars, drunk on booze & books - and whose London novels are less lyrical, more brutal (a la David Lawrence, whose
'The Dead Sit Round in a Ring' was a terrific noir debut, harkening back to the ultra bleak stuff of Derek Raymond) - if you like your cops bent, broke and twisted, these are your guys.

I'm going to go out on a limb and also suggest you check out Ross Thomas's stuff, much of which has been recently reprinted. Try Briarpatch or Chinaman's Chance or something. These are not detective novels per se - more espionage, really
- but they have a great voice and attitude, with some nice humor. And those Doc Fords by Randy Wayne White clearly owe a lot to Travis McGee. If you haven't read John D. McDonald's non-series stuff, it is also worth checking out.

And I'd also look at Jess Walter's first two novels - Land of the Blind and Over Tumbled Graves - two serial killer things w/ great depth.

Have fun!

        David Wright - Seattle Public Library Fiction Dept.
   
  "Only cease to cherish opinions."
                   -3d patriarch of Zen

 
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