Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Amazon.com Top 50 Hard-Boiled

Mario Taboada (matrxtech@sprintmail.com)
Sun, 07 Jun 1998 13:37:56 +0000 Kevin Smith:

<<So, the question is, who are some hardboiled female private eyes? Two
that spring to mind immediately are Lee McGraw's Madge Hatchett and Max
Allan Collins' and Terry Beatty's Ms. Tree. Any others?>>

Julie Smith's series featuring Skip Langdon is hardboiled - though
Langdon is a cop, not a P.I. This series is well worth reading. I like
the "neutral" tone that Smith adopts.

To my mind, the very best female crime writer of the past decade and a
half is Teri White. Once again, let me give her novel "Triangle" the
strongest possible recommendation. I have heard her compared to Graham
Greene - but to me she recalls Raoul Whitfield and David Goodis.

The work of harboiled writer Sara Paretsky, after a promising couple of
books, did not reveal to me the mettle, craftmanship, and sense of lived
experience that characterizes the best hardboiled fiction. The last one
was a painful experience - a humorless, dour harboiled exercise by the
book that did not satisfy either viscerally or intellectually.

Regards,

Mario Taboada
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