Agree with you about ACT OF LOVE--I definitely had the sense
of a writer still finding his feet with that one. Lansdale is
a novelist, as THE MAGIC WAGON and more recently the Hap and
Leonard books show, but I think he's a better writer at
shorter lengths. TMW and the H&Ls are short novels, after
all, and none (and certainly not the somewhat shambolic, if
entertaining, DRIVE IN series) are quite up to some of his
devastating short fiction. I've written elsewhere that "The
Night They Missed the Horror Show" is one of the best
suspense stories I've read by anyone, right up there with the
likes of Bloch's "Final Performance" or Pronzini's "Strangers
in the Fog" or Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," and
Lansdale's come close again at least a dozen times. And then
there are differently-brilliant short works such as "Bob the
Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland," as pithy a magic realist story
as one could want.
Likewise, though I can speak from less knowledge here, I have
read only two
(I believe) good novels by Joe Gores...I've read only two,
and they were both good, but they weren't a patch on the
brilliant short stories such as
"Watch For It" and the one about witnessing an execution,
among at least a half-dozen others I remember only slightly
less vividly after reading them over the years. So, is he
also a better short-story writer than novelist?
(And if anyone thinks that's a slight..."Watch For It" is
another of those first-rate suspense stories.)
-----Original Message----- From: Doug Bassett [mailto:
dj_bassett@yahoo.com] ACT OF LOVE -- Joe Lansdale. Very
much wanted to read this one -- I admire Lansdale without
reservation, and this had quite a reputation at one time for
being excessively bloody and violent. Finally found a copy
and truthfully was rather disappointed. This one was
Lansdale's first novel and as he sort of confesses in his
afterword, it's rather purple. Also rather earnest and solemn
-- Lansdale says that one of his main influences at the time
was early Dean Koontz, and yeah, it shows. (I don't like Dean
Koontz).
FINAL NOTICE -- Joe Gores My first in this series. Maybe I
caught this on a bad day, but this seemed like a pale
imitation of the 87th Precinct books. Does anyone have any
suggestions here, too?
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