>"Guilt-Edged Blonde"-- I enjoyed it quite a bit,
and
>the detachedness of Archer doesn't bother me because
Macdonald is so good
>with all the other characters.
Nothing to add, although the plot is just complicated enough
to suggest
that it may have been a test run for a novel. Is this story
similar to any
full-length Archers?
>"Mama's Boy"--I'd never read any of Alexander's work
before. This is a
>very compelling story, and while this may be a little
off-the-wall, the
>main character reminded me of what I've read about
Andrew Cunanan.
>Alexander's descriptions of New York are very
good.
Agree completely. Impressive look at how a killer is
created.
>"The Screen Test of Mike Hammer"--This is more of a
curiosity than a story,
>and while nobody admires Spillane more than I do, I
didn't care for this.
>Mike didn't really sound like himself most of the time
and what little plot
>there was seemed forced.
Here I really wondered whether Spillane was not parodying
himself! Packs
in several coincidences so we can lead up to his
trademark--the killing of
a beautiful, but deceitful woman. Parody? What do others
think?
"Home"--Here we come back to the question of whether
essentially
naturalistic (or proletarian) fiction--re "Brush Fire,"
"Fruit Tramp"--also
fits into the "hard-boiled" category. If this one, then
should Richard
Wright's fiction be called hard-boiled too?
While I think this story is competently told (regardless of
category),
there is one large improbability--that a black, raised in
this Southern
town, would forget the facts of life under segregation and
completely lose
his survival instincts while away at college. He walks into a
white
restaurant, doesn't turn on his heel when he sees what has to
be a white
cashier, doesn't even get it when she says "Wait." Too
incredible! (How
did he get to town, if not on segregated trucks or
buses?)
Still, the ending is brutal and believeable. The police hold
off so that
white "justice" can finish him.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.