Re: Re: RARA-AVIS: Who changed the noir writing ?

From: Joy Matkowski ( jmatkowski1@comcast.net)
Date: 15 Mar 2007


I enjoyed his PI series, despite historical inaccuracies and occasional histrionics. Mystic River to me was a not very good example of a coming-of-age literary novel, and I haven't read anything of his since.
    I'll read a new Patrick and Angie, but it seems he's having too much success with his more mainstream books to bother writing one.

Joy

Amy wrote:
> I like Lehane. After reading through this thread I started getting the
> feeling that I should be ashamed of liking him, but finally realized
> that was silly of me. Lehane tells a good character-driven story with
> tight plots, preposterous or not; he wouldn't be the first crime
> fiction writer to stretch the limits of a reader's suspension of
> disbelief or "cheat" with Shutter Island as Dave said. I've reread
> Shutter Island twice and with each reading I found that the cheating
> wasn't actually cheating...there were clues all along to what was
> going on, I just didn't pick them up in the first reading. Sometimes
> subtlety is refreshing. I see Cornell Woolrich as cheating more than
> Lehane.
>
> "Too long, too many unnnecessary details on "secondary-secondary"
> characters,
> and a very average story."
>
> Sometimes I'm in the mood for something long, a novel, and details
> that others may find unnecessary I find build the story. When I want
> something short and sweet I'll pick up a Thompson.
>
> Why do we peons like him? Maybe because he offers something that is a
> little rare: a damn good story with well developed characters. Not to
> mention his spot-on dialog to which few can compare, then or now. I
> don't feel like I've wasted time and brain cells reading him like I
> have with a few other contemporary crime writers. There's just a
> certain substance to his books, even the "second tier" ones.
>
> I'm not a writer or a scholar or a literary critic, but I also don't
> have a limited knowledge of genre lit or lit in general; I'm a reader
> of everything from classics to philosophy to hardboiled (and almost
> everything in between with the exception of romance). I feel that what
> Lehane does, he does very well. He's managed to cross the genre line
> and appeal to an audience that isn't exclusively crime readers while
> still remaining a crime writer.
>
> And now, the final note of my little hissy fit ;)
> To me, his Patrick and Angela series is one of the best contemporary
> PI series.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Mar 2007 EDT