Kevin, my old pal from the frozen north, writes:
>Neil asked:
>
>>How about this: essential hardboiled short
stories?
>
>Hey, that's almost what I've been polling (well,
trying to poll)
>folks on my site about! (I'm actually focussing on
P.I. short
>stories). Alas, so far, the results have been pretty
skimpy. However,
>if you guys wanna take a whack at it, by all
means....
>
>One problem with short stories --if you think some of
the old books
>are hard to find, wait'll you try finding some of the
old pulp
>stories! A lot of them are almost non-existent at
this point.
Kev, m'lad, you come very close to explaining why you're not
getting the response to that poll that you wanted. There are
just SO MANY great tec shorts (& even short shorts) that
to answer some of the questions (best tec ss ever? c'mon!)
require the respondent to (A) admit that he hasn't read
nearly enough -- what I call the "Who am I to say? I'm new in
town." syndrome -- or (B) stick with the safe, and easily
found, options (Dead Yellow Women, Fly Paper, etc.) or (C)
pick a few and try to let an arrogant swagger pass as
wisdom.
A is cowardly. B is merely timid. C is bullshit..
You can start knife fights just by asking people to name the
best tec NOVEL or SERIES OF NOVELS ever! Asking for the best
ss strikes me as an attempt to recreate Bosnia closer to
home. I got no problem with that, as long as you keep it
close to YOUR home. We're about theme-parked out down here
anyway. I'll take door A, Monty. I know when to keep my head
down.
Kev's site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
is worth more than a casual look, by the way. Just watch out
for that short story poll. That way lies ruin. PB
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