Thanks for the write-up, Jim. I love all this background
info. I really like the DKA books I've managed to get hold
of. Amazing cons, colourful characters that you can follow
for years--great reads. Cases was okay, but I wasn't as keen
about the one with the mountain climbing (about which miker
said he liked, althoug he "thought he failed to work the
climbing scenes effectively")--Come Morning, was it?
Karin
At 01:04 PM 16/01/2008 -0800, Jim Doherty wrote:
>Of course, Joe Gores is a professional writer.
In
>fact, whether one admires his work or not (and
I
>admire it quite a lot, as I sense most of you do),
one
>has to be impressed by the sheer work ethic he
brings
>to the craft of fiction.
>
>But here I'm talking about his past experiences as
a
>professional private detective that so informs
his
>fiction.
>
>When his first DKA story, "The Mayfield
Case"
>(retitled "Find the Girl" in his STAKEOUT ON
PAGE
>STREET collection), was first reprinted in a
BEST
>DETECTIVE STORIES OF THE YEAR anthology, the editor
of
>that series, Anthony Boucher, noted that Gores was
one
>of the few actual private investigators to enter
the
>mystery writing field since Hammett (the
parallels
>between Gores and Hammett have already
been
>mentioned).
>
>It must have been a proud moment for Boucher when
this
>story first appeared in the 12/67 issue of
EQMM.
>Though he'd sold an average of two stories per
year
>since 1957, while working as a PI, he had
never,
>AFAIK, written a PI story. A member of the Bay
Area
>chapter of MWA, Gores was asked by Boucher to give
a
>talk on what it was like to work as a real-life
PI,
>and specifically as a repo man, to a regular
monthly
>meeting. Boucher was so impressed with the talk
that
>he suggested Gores write a series based on
his
>real-life experiences. The DKA stories and
novels
>were the result of that suggestion.
>
>Regretfully, Boucher died soon after the first
DKA
>story was published, so he never got to see how
the
>series developed.
>
>But I'm going far afield here. The point is,
Boucher
>was quite right about few PI's actually turning
their
>real-life experiences into fiction between Hammett
and
>Gores. Cleve F. Adams, the creator of Rex McBride
and
>other hard-boiled PI's of the '30's and '40's,
claimed
>on his dust-jacket bio that he'd once been a
private
>detective (along with an insurance exec, a
copper
>miner, and an art director for the movies), but
that
>always had the smell of puffery. I never
really
>believed it.
>
>The only two private eye writers I can find
between
>Hammett and Gores, who were also for-sure private
eyes
>in real life, were a pair of agency ops in
Kansas
>City, MO, named John Roscoe and Mike Russo who,
as
>"Mike Roscoe," collborated on a rather
enjoyable
>series of Spillane-like novels featuring a KC
shamus
>Johnny April, all of which appeared in the '50's.
No
>one actually followed in the wake of Mike
Roscoe,
>however. Indeed, as noted, the Roscoe team
was
>following in Spillane's wake.
>
>But, just as Joseph Wambaugh's success, for all
that
>there had been cop-writers before him, seemed to
start
>a tsumani of cop-writers (including yours truly),
Joe
>Gores's seems to have been the source for a
similar
>wave, if perhaps not quite a tsunami, of
professional
>PI's writing about their work.
>
>Following in Gores's footsteps, we've seen his
fellow
>San Franciscans, Jerry Kenneally, Elizabeth
Pincus,
>Lise. S. Baker all break into print, as well
as
>Parnell Hall, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Michael
Stone,
>Art Hardin, and Don Winslow from the rest of
the
>country. And all of them, to at least a degree,
and
>in contrast to the "Mike Roscoe" team,
following
>Gores's lead in presenting some of the
reality,
>instead of the Chandleresque fantasy, of
private
>eye-ing.
>
>Gores has declared his stories and novels about DKA
to
>be "the first private eye procedural series."
He
>qualifies this by stating that Hammett's Op series
was
>written before the term "procedural" had been
coined,
>which I regard as not entirely logical. One might
as
>well say that DRAGNET wasn't a police
procedural
>because it debuted on radio seven years before
Boucher
>coined the term "police procedural," or, for
that
>matter, that Poe's "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue"
>wasn't a mystery because the term hadn't yet
been
>coined to described fiction dealing with the
solution
>of crimes.
>
>Still, there's no denying that Gores was
doing
>something that hadn't really been done before.
Even
>Hammett, for all his experience, was presenting
a
>fantasy about what it was like to to be a PI,
a
>fantasy with a heavy dusting of informed realism to
be
>sure, but a fantasy nonetheless. Hammett
presented
>PI's routinely solving murders. Gores presented
PI's
>doing skip traces, looking for debtors who'd
defaulted
>on their obligations, repossessing cars,
etc.
>
>Aside from Gores, the only real PI procedural I
can
>think of, and it was a stand-alone not a series,
was
>Stanley Ellin's heavily-researched Edgar-winner
THE
>EIGHTH CIRCLE.
>
>So, to perhaps a greater degree than any other
PI
>writer since Hammett, Gores was a
trend-setter.
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