I just finished Aarons's ASSIGNMENT: HELENE and have a couple
of others waiting for me -- ASSIGNMENT KARACHI and ASSIGNMENT
SULU SEA. I also have DON'T CRY, BELOVED, though that's more
of a gamble, since I've never read a non-Durell Aarons
before.
Anyhow, every time I read Aarons I'm struck by how underrated
the guy is. He didn't have the same amount of talent of his
labelmate Donald Hamilton, but he's never less than
entertaining. He's particularly good with settings -- you
really feel like you're at the places Durell visits. (I read
somewhere that Aarons was a pure armchair traveler and never
actually saw the places he wrote about. If so, that makes his
achievement even more remarkable.) His plots are always lean
and fast-moving, his action sequences solid, and I think he's
also good with characterizations. He can often introduce a
lot of complexity in his secondary characters with just a few
scenes.
I think he's underrated partly due to the titles, which are
godawful, and partly just because they seem dated. And they
are, admittedly -- they're very much of their time. (HELENE,
for instance, deals with post-colonial unrest on a
make-believe island that I think is supposed to be
Indonesia.) But if you can get past the surface details, I
think you'll be entertained.
Anyhow, I thought it might be fun if some people would
nominate their own picks for "Underrated hb books". By
"underrated" I don't mean "favorite"; I mean those books
which you really like, but which the mass of hb fans either
don't know about or don't care about. Aarons's Sam Durell
series is my pick.
doug
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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