I'll join in the consensus for non-weighted voting of twenty
candidates. I'd like to suggest, however, that we each
reserve at least ten of those positions for characters whom
we objectively believe (to the degree that we can be
objective) to be important in the history of hard-boiled
crime fiction. This leaves each of us with ten to vote our
own personal preferences.
By "important" I mean a character's who's been a
trend-setter, who has been persistently popular over a long
period of time, who is generally critically acclaimed, or
some combination. We can recognize a character who fits
tthese parameters without actually liking that character
(i.e. many people despise Mike Hammer, but it would be
fatuous to deny his importance to the genre), but a fair vote
would recognize that character's importance even if the
character wasn't universally liked.
Tis is a suggestion that I pass on to you as individuals, not
a mandate (as if I could), but if we don't keep in mind a
semi-objective standard of
"importance," the final list will be less a roster of the
most important characters than it is the most popular. That's
not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not what we started out
to do.
JIM DOHERTY
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