RARA-AVIS: Re: April is Month of the Disappeared

From: jchocking ( jchocking@yahoo.com)
Date: 28 Mar 2008


To kick things off early, in honor of the New Month and new topic, I have a question that's bothered me for some time.

Does anyone know what became of Thomas Maxwell?

It was commonly understood that the name was a pseudonym, but I've never learned who he really was. He appeared on the scene in 1987 with the entertaining, emotional, film-noir pastiche KISS ME ONCE. Followed it with the even more emotional, and far less pastiche, THE SABERDENE VARIATIONS. 1988 brought the (to me, cruelly disappointing) sequel, KISS ME TWICE. Then, in 1990, Maxwell produced THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME, which I found even less satisfying than KISS ME TWICE. And then he disappeared.

I read these when they were first issued, and I was a younger man, but the author's first two books struck me as remarkably accomplished works that managed to balance homage to noir works of the past with a genuine emotional intensity that gave them a resonance quite a bit beyond that of most pastiche.

Does anyone know any more about this author?

John Hocking



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