While I've read most of Dick Francis' work, and it's
certainly crime fiction, I wouldn't personally call it hard
boiled. I'd say Dick Francis is more in the vein of Rex
Stout, Ellery Queen, and Agatha Christie than the Black Mask
hard boiled writers we discuss here. It does not surprise me
that his name has not come up. He writes about genteel people
who find themselves in the midst of a criminal conspiracy by
no fault of their own, and it's their integrity and
intelligence that gets them out of it. Not really the meat we
digest here.
Patrick King
-------------------------------------------
Hardboiled? Soft-boiled? Parboiled? I suppose it's in the
mind of the reader. But I think some (not all) of Francis'
novels are filled with too much sadistic violence and
detailed torture, too many depressed heroes with wives or
relatives dying of cancer or living in iron lungs, too many
animal mutilations, too many truly sociopathic villains to be
put in the Christie-Queen-Stout category. And if the Sid
Halley novels aren't hardboiled, with the hapless
jockey-turned-private detective getting more of his destroyed
hand lopped off in each, then I'd be hard-pressed to come up
with a book that is.
Dick Lochte
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 23 Feb 2008 EST