Having found rara-avis thanks to the wonders of google.com,
I've been lurking around, reading the emails, surfing various
links and realising that I probably have no place here on two
counts - 1) I haven't read nearly enough and 2) I like Robert
B Parker's Spenser books.
Still, I did discover and buy thanks to the archive and
courtesy of Amazon, Tom Nolan's biog of Ross Macdonald, so I
intend to linger. Therefore I'd better introduce
myself.
I'm Richard Coomber, a sports journalist from West Yorkshire
in England. I missed out on hard-boiled fiction as a young
man (I'm now 55) because I was a bit of a book snob, although
a musician from the Drury Lane theatre tried to convert me
when I ran a small bookshop in London. He would buy two or
three thrillers a week to read in his non-playing moments
during a long running muscal. That got me thinking and
dabbling.
Later as a salesman and publicity man for Penguin Books in
the UK, I read several more thrillers - that's where I became
enthusiastic about Parker who we introduced to Britain - as
well as other writers who have become firm favourites like
Richard Condon, who became a friend.
After several years and several different careers, when
reading seemed to disappear from my life, I became a sports
journalist aged 40. It was a matter of learning some
technique and quick, and somehow I stumbled on a quote from
Chandler that seemed to sum up what sports writing should be
all about: "We are dealing with a public that is only
semi-literate and we have to make an art of a language they
can understand." I also loved the idea of "putting into the
stuff something they (the readers) would not shy off from,
perhaps even not know was there as a conscious realization,
but which would somehow distil through their minds and leave
an afterglow." Needless to say, I ain't achieved it often, if
at all.
That started me off reading hard-boiled fiction in order to
improve my writing style and led, inevitably to Ross
Macdonald, who I would probably name as my favourite author
if I was held against a wall by a persistent library
researcher.
I'm also a fan of Paretsky, McBain and Leonard and look
forward to being led towards new, as yet untried authors via
this list.
Richard Coomber
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