Yep, Somewhere A Roscoe is a classic, a real heart-felt
(albeit
tongue-in-cheek) tribute to Bellem's Dan Turner. Perelman
also wrote one of
the great spoofs of the entire private eye genre, My Lovely
Appetizer",
which zeroes in on the excesses of everyone from Sam Spade to
Dan Turner,
and particularly Marlowe and his band of world-weary
descendants. It
features P.I. Mike Noonan, Irish enough to know the
"difference between a
gossoon and a bassoon" and tough enough to know a red herring
(or a pink
one) when he sees one. It's all hear: the witty wordplay, the
cynical
secretary, the dangerous dame/client and the
suspiciously-tinted sea food.
The classic hardboiled parody. I've no idea where Appetizer
was first was
published, but it's bound to be in one or another of
Perelman's collected
works... Hunt it down. Read it.
According to Jeff Siegel's The American Detective, humourist
S.J. Perelman
"always seemed to show up on the fringes of the hard-boiled
crowd. He was a
drinking buddy of Hammett and Lillian Hellman's."
**************************************************
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
It's summertime, and the living is cheesy...What are you
reading this summer?
Tell us in this month's P.I. Poll...
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