hi mark,
you have a point. i knew from reading _burnt orange heresy_
and
_the killer inside me_ that a detective wasn't necessary, so
i stuck my foot in my mouth when i sounded like i thought it
was.
however, although detectives or police don't play a major
role in the above books, the major plot still revolves around
crime, and i guess more so than a detective, i was thinking
(in error) that that was a necessary ingredient of hardboiled
lit. i guess crime of one sort or another was always going on
in _garden of sand_, but i (hmm... maybe mistakenly, now that
i'm forced to think about it.) didn't see it as central to
the plot.
i'm glad you brought up the other books by him. i've read
_tattoo_ and _caldo largo_, but i hadn't heard of _the devil
to pay_.
i didn't much care for _tattoo_. my thought upon finishing it
is that he should have called it _jack's dick_. too much
concentration on sex. i thought it vulgar, and not in the "oh
my god that's disgusting" prudish sense of the word, but more
in a "common" definition. he strayed from his brilliant
portrayal of the human struggle (sorry. its a poor phrase but
all i can come up with now.) in _garden of sand_.
there are isolated scenes in _garden of sand_ that are etched
in my mind, like jack peeking in the tiny hell-hole apartment
of the drug addicts when they came to drag them away. or
when... no, i'm not gonna give that scene away.
i liked caldo largo though. it was exciting and humorous and,
in places, cruel. the guy wanting to buy the old lady an
alligator bag was mean humor.
thanks for commenting, mark.
miker
********************************************************
Miker, There are hard boiled books that don't have
detectives, such as most of Willeford or Jim Thompson works.
IMO, the late Earl Thompson's Garden of Sand is, or comes
pretty close. In case you didn't know, his Tattoo is a direct
sequel. I don't think it has the drive of the earlier book,
but you should love it. In his next book, The Devil to Pay,
Jack Wild's name has been changed to Jarl Carlson, but it is
clearly the same character. Thompson also wrote Caldo Largo
which not as not as clearly based on the author's life.
Mark
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