><< Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye
who
> didn't know the meaning of the word fear, a man
who
> could laugh in the face of danger and spit in
the
> eye of death -- in short, a moron with
suicidal
> tendencies.>>
Mario noted:
>Actually, this sounds uncannily like a classic
Richard Prather paragraph. The
>guy was way ahead of his time, almost postmodern, in
his humorous reworking of
>the cliché³®
Or maybe it could be Prather's literary ancestor, Robert
Leslie Bellem's Dan Turner, except then it would probably
scan something like this:
Mike Hardware was the kind of private orb who didn't know the
whatzit of the word fear, a yegg who could yuck it up in the
puss of danger and practice the art of spittery in the
viewport of the big beddy-bye -- in short, a numb noggin
prone to turning off his own bulb.
That's probably why fans of hard-boiled can shrug off so many
lame parodies of tough-guy writing that come from non-fans:
it's been around almost as long as the genre itself, and the
best has always come from the inside.
Of course, the big question still remains: did Prather and
Bellem know how funny they could be? Somehow, I think they
did.
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
New fiction from Anthony Neil Smith and Jochem Vandersteen, a
Reader's Survey and Talkin' 'Bout Shaft. Can you dig
it?
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