Re: RARA-AVIS: Washington writers

From: Mark Sullivan ( DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net)
Date: 02 Dec 2001


Richard,

Yes, it's the same Robert Andrews. I haven't read them, but he wrote four thrillers before the police procedural A Murder of Honor. They are listed as: Center Game, Last Spy Out, Death in a Promised Land and The Towers.

During the question and answer period following an interview presented at the Smithsonian, Donald Westlake named The Red Right Hand the
"perfect mystery." One of these days I've got to get around to reading it.

As for the music in George's books. As well as good reportage of the DC scene, George's musical choices also provide insight into the characters who listen to the various strains. Mark B and I were recently discussing this off list (it's also come up here before), that there is some polarity among readers about these shout outs. It really annoys some people, while others get a big kick out of it. We agreed that generation might play some role in the reaction.

I was thrilled when "my music" started showing up in hardboiled novels. I first noticed this in James Grady (Springsteen, among others), Benjamin Schutz (REM, Talking Heads, etc, and Springsteen, again), Michael Cormany (Iris Dement, Replacements and Husker Du, the pronunciation of which defined the difference between the cool PI and the old cop) and George (too many to list). I wonder if it's just a coincidence that three out of four of these are DC writers.

And Richard, how can you list DC Go-Go bands and leave out Trouble Funk, my old school favorites? I remember this one concert with them on a double bill with DC's premier punk band Minor Threat (featuring Ian MacKaye, now of Fugazi), now that was a night . . .

Mark

--
# 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 : 02 Dec 2001 EST