RARA-AVIS: Re: Noir sports...

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 22 Feb 2008


I'm surprised no one has mentioned William Campbell Gault's Brock "The Rock" Callahan, a former L.A. Ram prior to becoming a PI, who gets involved in a case with his old team in THE DAY OF THE RAM.

Another former-Ram-turned-PI, R.R. Irvine's lapsed Mormon Moroni Traveler, gets hired to look into a case involving a Salt Lake City baseball team in GONE TO GLORY.

BALEFIRE, the first cop novel by federal lawman Kenneth Goddard, involves a small Southern California police force in the depradations of a terrorist group intent on disrupting the 1984 Olympics in L.A.

In Brett Halliday's FOURTH DOWN TO DEATH, Mike Shayne is hired by the Miami Dolphins and is paid off with several shares of Dolphin stock. This is a late entry in the Shayne series, which means that Halliday probably had little, if anthing, to do with the actual writing of the book.

George LaFountaine's TWO MINUTE WARNING involves a sniper at a Super Bowl.

Thomas Harris's first novel, BLACK SUNDAY, involves a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl.

Both of those books were adapted into films released within a few months of each other.

In the Gordons' OPERATION TERROR, the final shootout takes place during a musical performance at the Hollywood Bowl. In the film version, however, EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, also written by the Gordons, the scene was changed from L.A. to San Francisco, and the counterpart scene takes place in Candlestick Park during a Giants-Dodgers game.

That's off the top of my head. I'm sure other Rare Birds will be able to come up with additional examples.

Oh, by the way, speaking of rugby, the sport that started this thread, doesn't Reginald Hill's first Dalziel/Pascoe novel, A CLUBBABLE WOMAN, involve a rugby team, or is it soccer? In either case, it's a team sport.

JIM DOHERTY

 

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