<<Spent yesterday trying (w/ my students) to figure out
the popularity
of
Carroll John Daly. Editor of Black Mask Boys (William F.
Nolan) trashes
him even as he asserts his place at the origin of the
hardboiled
phenomenon. My kids absolutely (and hilariously) tore Daly
apart. Of
course they'd just started reading Maltese Falcon, which can
make even
competent writing look hack by comparison>>
There's no dobut that Daly was the ultimate hack - but he was
a _great_
hack. Despite his maladroit and unruly prose and his
heavy-handedness,
one cannot deny that the man had _voice_ and knew how to keep
things
moving. More than a current celebrity writer, including the
awfully
tedious Elizabeth George, could take lessons from Daly in
this latter
respect.
Is anyone else tired of padded-out novels that stretch thin
material (or
material that would be good only for a short story) into
four- or
five-hundred page tracts? I get the impression that much of
the public
that reads mysteries feels cheated when an author (honestly)
keeps a
novel short and to the point. Good models for this are W. C.
Gault,
Joseph Hansen, Charles Willeford, Harold Adams, K.C.
Constantine, James
Sallis.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
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