>is peter robinson hardboiled? i've been looking at
some
>of his books at amazon. he's got one called _cold is
the
>grave_. in spite of the description, which made it
sound
>pretty hardcore and dark, involving pornography and
drugs,
>i still got a "cozy" feeling from it.
>thanks, miker
There is absolutely nothing cozy about Robinson, and if you
want to make a cozy/hardboiled dichotomy - ie, put every
mystery in the universe into one of or the other, he's
hard-boiled. The first half of "Cold is the Grave,"
particularly, seems heavily indebted to American HB fiction.
However, I tend to make a category for a school of British
psychological suspense/police procedurals (Robinson actually
lives in Canada but he was born in Britain and his series
novels at least are set there) that is not in the least cozy
but doesn't really come out of HB or noir either. Ruth
Rendell/Barbara Vine is the most prominent practitioner, and
I'd tend to put
*most* Robinson there (though "Cold is the Grave" is so
modeled along the lines of HB that it's arguably an
exception), along with Minette Walters, Stephen Booth, and
some Val McDermid (Kate Branigan is hard-boiled, in my mind,
but "A Place of Execution" isn't). The books are usually in
third person, the language and the protagonists are not
particularly colloquial or tough -in fact the protagonist cop
is often more educated or cosmopolitan than his/her
colleagues - and the world-view is distinguishable from noir.
This doesn't mean they're cozies by any stretch. And, by the
way, "Cold is the Grave" is an excellent book, although it's
worth reading at least the previous entry in the series ("In
a Dry Season") for a few important plot and character
points.
"Git" is an example of British slang that I think is terrific
and have tried to work into conversation but only get funny
looks (I've been saying it with a hard "g", like "get",
rather than soft like "jit," this is right isn't it?) I have
concluded, unfortunately, that you can only pull off most
British slang if you have a British accent (although some
words, like
"wanker" and "prat" and "shag" have a certain amount of
portability, if only because they sound exactly like what
they mean). If there's one thing British English has on the
American version, it's profanity. To swear convincingly,
we're pretty much stuck with variations on the F-word, and
Brits still do that one better too.
carrie
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