--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Burton Smith <kvnsmith@...>
wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 2, 2009, at 1:20 PM, rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
> > I haven't read THE RED RIGHT HAND yet, but Whitfield is most
> > definitely not one of Cornell Woolrich's pseudonyms. Whitfield did a
> > lot of air-war pulp fiction along with his BLACK MASK work, iirc.
>
> ...and wrote a couple of classic hard-boiled detective novels, GREEN
> ICE and my favourite, DEATH IN A BOWL, about private eye Ben
> Jardinn. Whitfield also created disgraced spy/ eye Donald Free, and,
> under the pen name of Ramon DeCorta, Island detective Jo Gar, who
> appeared in a ton of great stories in Black Mask. He was a drinking
> buddy of Hammett's, and lived possibly an even messier life.
To which I add that I think it would be a mistake to think of
Whitfield as Hammett's sidekick. He was an excellent writer, one of
the best Black Mask writers. His Green Ice never achieved the fame of
Hammet's Falcon, but it is a great novel. Same with the short stories,
great stuff that somehow has stayed in the shadow (relatively
speaking, and after the pulp era, of course).
I mentioned Green Ice, but the other novels are good, too, though not
as good.
Best,
mrt
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