Sally wrote:
>peaking for myself and not all double-X's (I
much
>prefer Crowe as Maximus and Spacey in LA
Confidential,
>and no actress can hold a candle to Robyn
Benincasa)
>but I read hardboiled because it's not
BORING.
good for you, see what I mean about generalizations? who's
Robyn Benincasa?
I think "liking books that aren't boring" is something that
readers of every gender (no really, I was reading how there
are actually like five genders depending on sexual preference
and practice, since gender isn't the same as sex after all)
can agree on.
For real, though, i just like writers who entertain me and
stimulate my gray cells keep me interested. I don't have a
particular prejudice or preference for hard boiled and in
fact two of my very favorite mystery writers
(Reginald Hill and Elizabeth Peters) are anything but. But I
have found that overall hard-boiled writers are more likely
to write fun, fast-moving stories about compelling and
contemporary (whether the book is set in the present or not)
subjects, often about subjects that are absent not only from
other types of crime fiction but from "serious" literature as
well. Also it happens that when I first came to reading crime
fiction seriously a few years ago, the writers I stumbled on
were Ian Rankin and Dennis Lehane; I read interviews with
them and sought out the writers that they recommended and of
course their reading lists skewed toward the hard boiled but
I have no complaints.
As for Sherlock's cocaine use, I recall that he discusses it
extensively with Watson in one of the early stories - perhaps
"Sign of the Four" as has been mentioned. Watson is rather
disapproving but more in the way one would be of a habit that
is a little unpleasant and unconventional than "oh my God my
friend is a druggie".
-
He got thirty years for lovin' her/ from some Oklahoma
governor,/ who said
"everything this doughboy does is wrong" - Tom Waits
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
-- # 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 May 2002 EDT