Many of my favorites suddenly have hit the comment
line.
Stanley Ellin is one of the forgotten masters of the mystery.
He was a true craftsman. Most acclaimed for his short work
(deservedly), his novels are well worth searching out. This
includes his one mainstream novel. I hope one day he is
recognized again as a master. He was also a very nice man as
I learned as a newcomer to the mystery world twenty years
ago. The truely great ones (Fred Dannay is another) were
always warm and down to earth and so very approachable by the
newcomer.
I never met Robert Bloch but first read him more than 40
years ago. He wrote a lot of crap but at a penny a word that
will happen. While I love the movie Psycho, I believe the
novel was a great one. I try not to compare between the two
different media. But looking beyond the flash and innovative
technique of the movie, I have to say here was a depth to the
novel that the movie missed. Movies usually do miss that
depth. The Hitchcock movie deserves all its praise but it
would not exist without the original creation of Robert
Bloch.
As for James M. Cain, I have always felt a kinship with him.
I even enjoy his weaker work. But I never paid much attention
to his view of lumping him in with hardboiled writers and his
hatred of that label or the low opinion than Chandler had of
him. Both are understandable. Neither increase or decrease my
enoyment of his work. I have thought. however, that given
Cain's view of the genre field that it must have galled him
to be reduced in the 1950s to selling his stories to Manhunt,
a magazine devoted to the category in which he did not want
to be included. It must have pained him even more to have
some of his stories rejected by that magazine,
Richard Moore
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