John wrote:
>Is there a better description of two guys
just
>doing their job than the bomb disposal fellers
ingoring the gangster sat on
>the booby trapped toilet at the beginning of Freaky
Deaky (the last great
>Elmore Leonard IMHO)?
>
>In general it seems to me it's a great help when a
writer has a real
>experience of work to draw from - as with Higgins'
lawyer books or
>Pelecanos' Firing Offence & Shoedog or Robert
Sims Reid neglected cop novel
>Big Sky Blues or Anthony Bourdain's chef noir Bone In
The Throat - and
>conversely, perhaps one of the weaknesses of much
private eye fiction is
>that writers are continually struggling trying to
write convincingly about a
>more or less imaginary profession.
And yet, Leonard never worked for the bomb squad, Chandler
was never a private eye, Ellroy was never a crooked L.A. cop,
and as far as I know, Ed McBain was never any kind of cop.
And my guess is George doesn't go around arranging ambushes
between groups of heavily-armed men, either. Writing what you
know is great, but it's just so darn limiting. It doesn't
have to be real; but it sure has to feel real.
Not that real life experience isn't a help, but imagination
and legwork should never be undervalued, either.
And Kerry wrote:
>Of course, there's also the question
>of whether someone living and writing in Newfoundland
(as Harvey does) is
>considered "American".
Hell, I have relatives in Newfoundland who don't even
consider themselves Canadian.
And Mark wrote:
>All your choices are good. If you want a guide to
authors and our favorite
>books of theirs, you might try looking in the
archives for a Rara Avis
>survey of the hb authors who made the most impact on
us. I think it
>began in December 1999
>under the thread 'blown away' Kevin Smith printed the
basic list on his
>web site: http://www.thrillingdetective.com/
I don't know if it's still
>available there
Yep, it's still there, listed on the TRIVIA page somewhere. I
never throw anything out (even I find stuff on there that
I've forgotten about). And you could check out the responses
to various P.I. Polls over the years, for reader's comments,
pro and con, about the P.I. genre. I'm sure you'll notice the
names of some of the perpetrators.
-- Kevin -- # 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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