RARA-AVIS: Re: Pronzini

From: Kevin Burton Smith ( kvnsmith@colba.net)
Date: 29 Jan 2001


>I devoured Bill Pronzini's THE VANISHED (1973), #2 Nameless, and marvel
>at what a compact mystery it is, with few if any extraneous words. It
>seems to me, in my limited understanding of what constitutes "noir",
>that it qualifies, but I'd appreciate any comments the experts care to
>provide.

Well, Pronzini himself doesn't think any of the Nameless books are hardboiled, much less noir (except for one story). He calls them human stories with an edge, or something like that, in the intro to that story, in a recent collection. Then again, what does he know?

The collection, by the way, MASTER'S CHOICE, is pretty interesting. It's edited by Lawrence Block, and pairs stories by current crime writers with original stories by classic authors that inspired them.

-- 

Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.thrillingdetective.com
Now online: The 3rd Annual Cheap Thrill Awards. Fiction by Laura Lippman, Scott Wolven and Anthony Rain. And 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/ .



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