I was in Boston for a while. I met a woman who is a lurker on
this list. Her only comment on it was, "Michael Robinson
seems to write a lot."
I read two Raul Whitfield books for '30's month. The first is
Green Ice. I know Mario and others consider it a classic, but
I think it can be thought that if you consider it was
published at the beginning of the decade, but not if you
compare it to its contemporary The Maltese Falcon or many
books that came later. Miker has already outlined its plot.
Mal Orney has gone to prison to protect a girl whom he wants
nothing to do with when she picks him up upon his release. He
inherited a small fortune which he plans to use to help the
little guys against the big guys.When he arrives in New York
City a former inmate who was to help him. Immediately, there
are some murders which Mal somehow knows weren't committed by
the obvious suspects. even though he had just been in prison.
The the writing is good -- lean and tough, but the plot's
weakness, the lack of credible motivation or well devoped
characters made this book a disappointment to me.
The second book is Death in a Bowl which was published a year
later, 1931.In this the central figure is a private
detective, Ben Jardinn. The characters seem more believable
to me. When Ben is suspicious of someone he gives his
reasoning. The writing is again good. Perhaps its weakness is
how the complicated the title murder is, but it is
ingenious.
On to the forties... Mark
-- # 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 : 30 Nov 2002 EST