I don't really get the Rankin/Ellroy comparison - Rankin does
tend to have fairly convoluted plots but his prose is pretty
straightforward and the stories are basic police procedural
stuff, with a loner aspect thrown in that makes them feel
more like PI novels at times. There are certainly some
"corruption of social institutions"/ police brutality type
themes that you usually find in HB, but I don't get the
"moral sickness permeating all levels of society" feel that I
took from Ellroy. I'm not overwhelmed with the quality of
Rankin's writing - not that it's bad, but fairly workmanlike
most of the time - but the stories are pretty good and the
characters are fun. I've read maybe half a dozen of these and
my favorite is "The Hanging Garden"; I haven't read "The
Black book" though, and I have a hunch this series ought to
be read in order (which I haven't done) in order to get the
whole flavor of the stories. I generally have trouble keeping
track of who Rebus is working or sleeping with in any given
book, but it's such a long series that I haven't disciplined
myself to sit down and read them in order yet. The one I read
most recently, "Dead Souls" I thought had the potential to be
a Great Book, but the story went off on so many tangents (I
counted five separate plots, any of which could be considered
the "main" plot of the book, at least one of which - excon
stalking Rebus - could have been eliminated to the great
improvement of the book) that the final impact was sort of
lost on me.
Carrie
_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
-- # 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 : 29 Dec 2001 EST