Darlene Black wrote;
>I have been having a difficult time finding out about
Canadian
>hardboiled fiction. Oddly enough, in one book on
Canadian crime
>writing Lawrence Block is listed but as far as I know
he's not
>Canadian nor do any of his books take place in
Canada. My
>preference is for fiction which takes place in Canada
but even
>books written by Canadians would be of interest. Does
anyone know
>of a link or have any suggestions?
And our boy Bill wrote:
>I'm leaving out Ross Macdonald, and any pulp writers
who wrote for
>American pulps (because I can't think of any). Mr.
Smith knows a lot
>about Canadian mysteries and will chip in, I'm
sure.
And our man from the Badlands, John Williams, chipped in
with
>Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper came out a year or so back
and is a fine Canadian
>hardboiled novel with a dash of psychological terror
thrown in - something
>like Stephen Dobyns recent stuff.
>
>Ladies Night by Elizabeth Bowers (!988ish) was an OK
feminist h/b novel set
>in Vancouver that James Crumley bought the film
rights to.
Yeah, that one was pretty good. Feminism with Vancouver
street cred. I hadn't realized Crumley had the rights. What
happened to the project?
>Wasn't Elmore Leonard's Killshot set partly in
Canada?
Yep, and Trevanian's THE MAIN, which is one of the best crime
books ever set in Montreal. But neither Trevanian or Leonard
are Canadian.
WHEW!!! I'll really reply to this later, since I'm almost the
door, but:
Don't leave out Ross Macdonald. He and his wife, Margaret
Millar, thought of themselves as Canadian, and if you read
some of his contemporaries in what was then the exploding
CanLit scene of the sixties and seventies, you can see the
similarities. Certainly, Margaret Laurence and Macdonald
would have understood each other.
One recent name you should all check out is John Swan. His
collection/novel THE ROUGE MURDERS is true Canuck Noir. I
just finished it, and it's the real deal, one of the best
books I've read in a while. In fact, John's somewhere on this
list, I think. Hello?
And no, Howard Engel's Benny Cooperman books aren't exactly
hard-boiled, but his little Jewish P.I. is his own kind of
tough. They're quite enjoyable books.
And one name getting a lot of attention in CanLit circles
these days is David Adams Richards. Some of his stuff about
life and death in the Mirimachi is as nasty and hard as it
gets, even if it does give off a whiff of "literature."
Then there's John Farrow's recent CITY OF ICE, a flawed but
enjoyable first stab at a thriller, by a respected Canadian
author. A sequel is imminent, and I hope he pulls it
off.
Man, I'm going to be late...
And Etienne added:
>I however would like to add that there were
Canadian
>writers in that field, but most of them
were
>English-speaking "wetbacks" being published in
the
>USA.
>
>Some of them finally took the American
citizenship.
>With very few exceptions they rarely used Canada
as
>background for their novels, preferring probably to
be
>confused as American writers...(?)
Well, wetbacks is a little insulting, especially since, as
far as I know, none of them renounced their citizenship, or
snuck across the border. They simply went where they could
get published. Canada's always been a hard market for
hard-boiled. But some did set their stories in Canada, and
some were published here: David Montrose, Ronald J. Cooke and
even, once upon a time, Brian Moore, come to mind...
>*Ted Wood- series during the 80's- surely of
HB
>inspiration from what I know (but I did not read
it,
>as reputation is low).
Ted Woods' Reid Bennett stuff is okay, as far as it goes, but
I find them right up there with all those hokey Dudley
Doright Mountie stories in the pulps and in film -- they
pander to Americans and Europeans who think we all still live
in log cabins.
I do have lists of private eyes from Canada (and other,
lesser countries) on my site (not all are HB, but many are).
Go to TRIVIA and then CALLING OUT AROUND THE WORLD...
Anyway, I've really gotta go...more later....Now where are my
showshoes?
--
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.thrillingdetective.com
Now online: The 3rd Annual Cheap Thrill Awards. Christmas Gifts. New fiction by Laura Lippman, Scott Wolven and Anthony Rain. And the debut of Tim Broderick's ODD JOBS. -- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Jan 2001 EST