james.doherty@gsa.gov
25 Oct 99 11:46:00 -0400
RE BobT's recent
post:
While Daly was
undoubtedly first with a PI character named
"Three-Gun" Terry
Mack, the Op beat Race Williams into print by
several months.
Further, although "Three-Gun Terry," the
first-ever story
about a hard-boiled sleuth who defines his
profession as a
private detective, beat "Arson Plus," the first
Op story, into
print by a few scant weeks, there's no reason to
suppose that
Hammett would never have created the Op had not
Daly created Mack.
In fact the rwo stories were very probably
being written
simultaneously. Daly, being a less careful
writer, simply beat
Hammett to the mailbox.
On the other hand,
there's plenty of reason to suppose that
Chandler wouldn't
have created Marlowe, Macdonald wouldn't have
created Archer,
Nebel wouldn't have created Donohue, etc.,
etc., etc., had
Hammett not first created the Op.
In other words,
while Daly was undeniably first, Hammett was
far more
influential.
JIM DOHERTY
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Mon 25 Oct 1999 - 14:21:57 EDT