Hello all - my name is Rene (as in French version of Renato)
from Sydney, Australia and I have been a long time lurker
& reader of the archives of this list but my previous
attempts to send messages to the list have all been bounced.
I'm hoping I'll make it this time. A little background info :
I have been a keen reader of hardboiled & noir fictions
(& film noir & tough crime films in general) since my
teens back in the mid-70's, when I first read Hammet,
Chandler & JM Cain (in that order).That was all I read in
the genre until approximately 1984 because it was all I knew
about. Then I stumbled a cross some of the Zomba Black Box
thrillers in a second hand bookshop - the covers & blurbs
lead me to believe that I was gonna find something along the
lines of the mentioned big 3 (well, one version of the big
3).The first 2 I picked up were WR Burnett & Horace MCoy
& I was hooked. The 3rd omnibus volume I picked up was
the Jim Thompson & that just blew my mind.Eventually I
picked up all the different vol's (I think) except the
Anthony Boucher which appeared to be cozies type fiction so I
passed it by - this may have been a mistake.Very shortly
after this someone at a party told me about the Black Lizard
line & how they'd just reprinted almost every Thompson
book there was.I haven't looked back since. My personal
favourites are Thompson, Chester Himes & Peter Rabe.I
generally prefer
"vintage" authors, particularly the Gold Medal authors but I
try to keep up with more modern authors - favourites include
the "Stark" Parker books, Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley,
Gerald Petievich - just off the top of my head.I just have to
say that I love this list - I have learned so much from it
& discovered so many new authors that i stand in awe of
the knowledge & erudition of many of the list members. I
hope to contribute in the future myself. Rene.
-- # 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 : 22 Jan 2002 EST