RARA-AVIS: Re: PBO's

From: Kevin Burton Smith ( kvnsmith@colba.net)
Date: 19 May 2000


Juri asked:

>Are all the good HB writers now active in hardcover?

Well, speak of the devil, John Shannon's Jack Liffey series are PBOs. And Dashiell Loveless's two Benjamin Drake books were also published in paperback (of course, they almost have to be, since they're a dead-on spoof of Dell mapback packaging.

But I always think of PBOs as mass market editions. You know, the ones you see for sale in racks at drugstores, bus stations, newstands, grocery stores and other such fine literary establishments. Somehow, I never see the larger trade paperbacks, with their high prices and sometimes airy pretensions, as promising the same fast hard pulpiness that the best PBOs deliver.

Other PBO series I rather enjoyed were Rob Kantner's Ben Perkins series and Glenn Duncan's Rafferty series (Spenser as a cowboy). And probably the ultimate PBO series was John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee's. Though, of course, eventually he slipped into hard-cover.

Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/

An A&E Mystery.com Site of the Week, but don't let that discourage you.

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