>I wondered if anybody knows of other books which so
singularly inspired a
>writer to write?
I can think of two cases: there's the story by Earle Stanley
Gardner that
Raymond Chandler kept writing and rewriting from memory to
learn his craft
before he wrote "Blackmailers Don't Shoot."
And, in doing some background work on Dorothy B. Hughes, I
came across her
account of reading and rereading Eric Ambler's _The Coffin
for Demetrios_ .
Her decision to turn to mysteries "was born within its
covers." Her
first, _The So Blue Marble_ (1940), however, seems to owe
more to _The
Maltese Falcon_ (which she doesn't mention), especially for
the valuable
object that is a fake. But her first solid work in noir (?),
_The Fallen
Sparrow_ (1942), is dedicated to Ambler, "2nd Lieutenant,
Royal Artillery,
somewhere in England, because he has no book this
year."
A nice 'tip of the hat" to her mentor, I thought.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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