I liked Bloch's THE DEAD BEAT too when I read it way back in
the early 1960s. I had the paperback--Popular Library as I
recall. I wonder if it would hold up? Mysteries too tied to
music trends or hipster lingo date very badly. It's like
watching a rerun of "77 Sunset Strip" and listening to Kookie
go through his patter. Too gone Daddy.
You can count me as one of the few surviving fans of the late
David Alexander (1907-1973), author of the Bart Hardin series
and one of the best reporters of thoroughbred horse racing in
history. His articles provided some of the first-hand
background for the excellent book SEABISCUIT that dominated
best seller lists a few years ago. But I found the calypso
background of DEAD, MAN, DEAD (Lippincott 1959) a bit
tedious, although in 1959 it probably played well. The novel
was redeemed somewhat by the crazed ventriloquist with his
two dummies Hunch and Trudy. Not much chance of a revival,
even of Alexander's best novels. I doubt there is a market
these days for mapcap mysteries.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, ejgorman99@... wrote:
>
> I'm in a minority here. I'm so much of a Bob Bloch
fan that I like
The Dead
> Beat. Intersting take on the beat musician as
psychopath.
>
>
> **************
> Biggest
> Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL
Music.
>
> (
http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?
NCID=aolcmp00300000002548)
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Feb 2008 EST