Yeah, I'd have to say the seventies are a real treat,
particularly for P.I. buffs. Then-rookies like Bill Pronzini,
Robert Parker, Joseph Hansen, Michael Collins, Dick Francis,
Joe Gores, James Crumley, Roger Simon, Arthur Lyons, Marcia
Muller, Lawrence Block, Liza Cody, Ernest Tidyman -- all
these folks, in their own way, really shook up the genre. And
guys like Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald wrote some of
their best books during this period.
And I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of great writers from that
period, but thanks to them, the genre is something far more
vital than a nostalgic joke wrapped up in fedoras and
trenchcoats.
As for non-Caucasian protagonists, John E. Bruce's SADIPE
OKUKENU was not only one of fiction's first black private
eyes, but he was also one of the very first fictional private
eyes, period. He was an operative for the International
Detective Agency, predating Hammett's CONTINENTAL OP by at
least fifteen years!
He appeared in only one case, THE BLACK SLEUTH, serialized
between 1907 and 1909. He's on the trail of a stolen diamond,
which takes him from England to America and back home to
Africa, and allows him, as Gary Phillips says, in his essay
The Cool, the Square and the Tough, to ruminate "on the state
of race relations on these various continents."
I'm not sure how hard-boiled he was, but it might be
interesting to find out.
--
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