miker wrote:
"I can see why Haut had such a hard time dealing with Himes.
Trying to twist the whole genre into a commentary on state
crime is the equivalent of hammering a square peg into a
round hole. My reading of hardboiled and noir sees personal
accountability as a common theme."
Real Cool Killers was early in the series (second or third).
The Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones books became more and
more about society as the series went along (not to say there
wasn't some critique from the very beginning). This is not to
say they became didactic; in many ways they became better,
and funnier. But by the time he gets to the end of the
series, Cotton Comes to Harlem and Blind Man with a Pistol,
they're far more about corrupt people in institutions and
less about the two detectives whose victories seem smaller
and smaller.
Mark
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