RE: RARA-AVIS: From the edge of the urban wilderness...

From: marianne.macdonald@lineone.net
Date: 26 May 2000


I'll say hello too. I'll hold the fighting talk until I've been around a bit longer (except perhaps to mention that I think a lot of of Paretski, Grafton and Muller), and just say that I'm a repentant-academic writer of a rather cosy series of murder mysteries with a woman amateur detective; the five written to date have dealt with stalking, religious fanaticism, date-rape, revenge, and the arrogance of parental/family pressure. As I say, these are cosies.

As for academic studies, well -- as Bill Hagen is presumably aware, the pressure to publish does strange things to the youthful academic mind
(and the older one, too). But I don't know the book, and would rather read at least part of it before I jump to conclusions. But of course social perspectives have changed, and the rules of the game for hard-boiled novels, with them. It makes about as much sense to try to write an imitation Chandler in May 2000 as to write an imitation Agatha Christie.

I'm part-way through reading Val McDermid's "Suitable Job for a Woman", which is not an academic study and, to my mind, full of interesting stuff.

Marianne Macdonald

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