Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Missing Authors: Jonathan Valin

From: blumenidiot ( blumenidiot@yahoo.com)
Date: 05 Apr 2008


--- jacquesdebierue < jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Burton
> Smith <kvnsmith@...>
> wrote:
> <<And then there's Joseph Hansen, who's no longer
> missing; just dead,
> but who for a while shared a paperback publisher
> with Lyons. I don't
> think enough people are aware of just how good
> Hansen's books
> featuring gay insurance investigator Dave
> Brandstetter really were;
> Hammett-terse, but Macdonald-nasty. Like the late
> Dennis Lynds, who
> was our guest here a while back, he was one of those
> guys who quietly
> but substantially changed the genre, by exploring
> and exploiting
> possibilities people like Hammett and Chandler had
> only (perhaps
> unintentionally) hinted at.>>
>
> I like Hansen. I still have a couple of his novels
> to read... his
> stories hold together beyond the crime
> investigation; solid stuff, and
> as you say, Hansen did expand the genre in a quiet
> way. Same with
> Lynds and Greenleaf. In fact, Greenleaf may be the
> greatest of the
> Ross Macdonald disciples. After his first couple of
> books, he greatly
> expanded that type of story based on skeletons from
> the past. Is he
> still writing or also missing? I should ask if he's
> publishing...
> writing and publishing (getting published) are not
> the same thing.
>
> Best,
>
> mrt
The last I heard Greenleaf had retired from writing his John Marshall Turner series.

I read a few, but the last I read I thought was very weak. I'm pretty sure I wrote about it here so my reasons for thinking that should be in the archives somewhere.

I read Valin's first, THE LIME PIT, and a couple of others, but one disappointed me, and I never read more. Mark
>
>

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