Re: RARA-AVIS: Jonathan Craig

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 08 Aug 2002


Bill,

Damn, you went and stole my thunder. I was going to mention Craig, but you beat me to it, and have left me with little to add. Not, however, with NOTHING to add:

Two trivia points about Craig's Pete Selby series:

First, paralleling McBain, who wrote NYPD procedural short stories for magazines like MANHUNT and ARGOSY before starting the 87th Precinct series, Craig wrote first wrote porcedurals for MANHUNT. In fact the first Selby novel, THE DEAD DARLING, was an exapnded version of a short story with the same title that originally appeared in MANHUNT.

Second, when Anthony Boucher first coined the term
"police procedural" in his Christmas column for 1956, he mentioned, not surprisingly, DRAGNET, McBain, and Marric. One other writer he mentioned very prominently was Craig. In that sense Craign is one of the founding fathers of this sub-genre. Boucer would say elsewhere that, with the exception of McBain, Craig was the best American writer of big-city procedurals.

JIM DOHERTY

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