<<Prather is no joke. In the history of PI fiction, he
is, at the very
least, as important a figure as anyone writing
today.>>
Interesting. As I said in another post, I am only a minor fan
- but I
notice that I never forget a Prather novel. That says
something about
his skill and voice. To follow up on James's comment - there
are a lot
of recent P.I. novels that I forget almost immediately (and I
have a
respectable memory). There was a highly-praised affair called
North of
Montana, which awoke some interest while reading it, but two
months
later I can't tell you much about it.
Chandler once said of a Norbert Davis story: "It must have
been very
good because I could not forget it". There's definitely
something to it.
Let's not forget also that in the paperback boom a lot of
writers tried
out all kinds of "experimental" stuff, sometimes crazy stuff.
And when
it came off, it turned a nominally commercial product into
something
much better. A good example is John D. MacDonald, who never
did anything
as good as some of those old Gold Medals from the fifties.
Goodis is
another good example.
Perhaps we should do some Prather - after all this talk, I'm
anxious to
revisit him..
Regards,
Mario Taboada
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