Re: RARA-AVIS: Send Carroll John Daly . . . to the reading list

Mario Taboada (matrxtech@sprintmail.com)
Wed, 29 Jul 1998 04:35:39 +0000 <<I'd like to second Mario's motion. As always, Mario shines a light
into the darkest of corners of the hardboiled genre. I, for one, have
never been disappointed by an MT recommendation.>>

Thank you, thank you...but, er, my straight-faced recommendation was
also tongue-in-cheek (to add another cliche to the cascade). But it is
true that Daly's novels are virtually unknown. _The Hidden Hand_ was
also reissued on paper by Harper, together with a couple of other Daly
books. I don't think those are in print any more, so it's nice to have
the electronic edition. Is it in Acrobat format?

Daly delivered torrents of action without the scruples of the stylist
who must polish, cut, trim, and embroider; he was also unfettered by the
rules of the logician. His hero in this novel and in so many short
stories, quintessential harboiled P.I Race Williams, pushes ahead and
dammit all, shooting on sight and on mere suspicion, doing the thinking
afterwards. In his entertaining book of memoirs, _The Pulp Jungle_,
Frank Gruber (himself a considerable pulpster) speaks highly of his
friend Daly, who apparently was a meek man with not an ounce of
hardboiled in him except when writing. Gruber thinks that Daly deserves
more recognition (which I interpret to mean that he was a great hack,
not an ordinary one). There are many better and subtler writers, but
no-one was more hardboiled than Daly, not even his spiritual son Mickey
Spillane.

Regards,

MT
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