somebody wrote: They only kill those characters that need to
be killed. There are no innocent bystanders that catch
bullets. Only those who need killing get killed...
************ With few exceptions, this is true of the earlier
stuff. In later hardboiled, causing death to an innocent is a
handy way to produce those wonderful inner demons for the
protagonist to wrestle with. This way there is both external
and internal turmoil. Block's Scudder blasts an innocent
child in a street fight. T.J. Parker's detective in Laguna
Heat lives with the memory of hesitating to blast a bad guy
and a policeman going down. Both characters spend many happy
hours afterwards wal- lowing in guilt and misery.
In noir, of course, guilt and misery for death wrong- fully
inflicted stretches way back and is a common device. Goodis's
protagonist in SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER carries the guilt of
his wife's suicide on his shoulders. Cora and Frank are in
despair over killing the Greek. Hmm... Maybe that's not a
very good example. ;-)
I'm not through with this, either. More later.
miker
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