I've just finished "A Time of Predators", the only Gores book
I've read. (I've started "Contract Null and Void", a DKA
book.)
The edition I read is a 2005 "Otto Penzler Presents" reprint,
with a brief introduction by Penzler. The intro concludes by
saying that there are a number of good reasons to read the
book: "Here is an excellent reflection of a time just before
the world changed forever, and here is an absorbing suspense
novel, and here is the book that launched the career of one
of the finest crime writers alive."
I certainly found it an absorbing suspense novel. It's a
revenge story, whose more or less sympathetic protagonist is
a middle aged professor who goes after a gang of teenage
hoods. I don't think he's particularly likeable, but he's the
guy with whom the reader identifies. The issue of good guys
vs bad guys and whether this is an adequate way of thinking
about the world is actually explicitly addressed in the book.
The protagonist thinks of the teenagers as
"predators" he needs to track down, but then when he begins
to execute his revenge the reality of the situation gives him
pause. There is a cop in the story who says there are two
kinds of people in the world;
"the worms and the human beings." The protagonist respects
the cop and thinks maybe cops have to think in that binary
way, but in the end he rejects it for himself.
The first clause of that sentence I quoted is a fancy way of
saying that the book is dated in some ways. The intro notes
that the language is relatively tame and that the sexual
behaviour of the characters reflects a pre-"sexual
revolution" mind set. Sexual attitudes and behaviour are
actually key to the plot, so this is significant. It occurred
to me that the book was also very much of its time in another
way: as a sort of precursor to 1970s revenge fantasy stories,
in which a decent man has to go out and execute violent
justice himself because the police and courts can't or
won't.
(I think of this as a 1970s sort of subgenre, "Dirty Harry"
and so on, but maybe such stories were also common earlier,
for all I know.)
Anyway, I think the book is pretty strong even if it is
somewhat dated.
Stephen Burridge
On Jan 23, 2008 12:37 PM, <
harry.lerner@mail.mcgill.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> I'm about half way through WOLF TIME and I have
found it quite
> different from all of his DKA books, especially the
more recent three.
> In WOLF TIME Hollis Fletcher, the main protagonist,
is not completely
> unlikeable, but neither is he the easiest character
to care about. The
> other characters vary in their respective degrees of
cynicical
> self-motivation, but there is not a single one that
is readily likeable.
>
> Although I haven't read Gores's other stand alone
books, I suspect that
> they may be more or less in the same vain (e.g. A
TIME FOR PREDATORS,
> COME MORNING, etc.)
>
> Best,
> Harry
>
>
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