I got a chance to see it again recently on Encore's Mystery
channel,
along with "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." I've been
convalescing from
surgery, and (between books) I've been turning on the Mystery
channel
most afternoons to watch old sixties hardboiled PI shows. I
was ready
for a parody or two... :-D
Add me to the list that finds Janet Evanovich less than
entertaining
(maybe the grandmother was just a little too precious for me)
but I like
Carl Hiaasen, mostly for his sublime sense of the ridiculous.
It's
hard to think of a scene funnier than the "Tile brothers"
entering the
fishing contest... and even Elmore Leonard never came up with
a bad guy
who decides to use a weed-whacker as a prosthetic device
after his hand
gets chewed off.
I don't know if a formal introduction is in order or not --
I've been
lurking on this list since sometime in January, on and off.
I've read
some classic hardboiled stuff (like Chester Himes & James
M. Cain) as
well as some more recent writers, but I'm hoping to broaden
my horizons
here. I've been enjoying all the discussion and the
recommendations
(especially on this latest topic!)
I'm currently working my way through Elmore Leonard's
backlist -- a
process I've interrupted long enough to read Cuba Libre, his
latest. I
think I'd avoided him in the past because I had his books
categorized as
"caper" novels, and I've generally hated other novels I've
read in this
sub-genre. What convinced me to try him was seeing "Get
Shorty" -- and
hearing that the movie came close to doing justice to the
book. I
hardly know whether to be impatient with myself for being
less than
open-minded about something I haven't read, or whether to
savor having
made a wonderful discovery! So far, the savoring has won
out...
Terri
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