Re: RARA-AVIS: SF CHRONICLE on some noir authors

From: Joy Matkowski ( jmatkowski1@comcast.net)
Date: 06 Oct 2003


Mark Hall asked about the article. The setup is too facile, and I wished he'd had put a couple of other authors in the space he wasted on it.
    I'm not familiar with Bayo Ojikutu or Ernest Hill.
    I intended to try Steven Torres because Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans are rare in crime fiction and they're very different from other Hispanics in that they're Americans, which presents unique possibilities and problems. I never did because the reviews of the first in the series suggested there wasn't much of anything Puerto Rican about the book. I'd appreciate comments by anyone who has read it.
    I've read a Barbara Neely and found it too cozy for my tastes.
    I read Solomon Jones's "Pipe Dreams." The dialogue and goings-on appear to me to be genuine Philadelphia on crack, and there's an actual exciting plot. However, some copyeditor like me (or maybe Jones's internal copyeditor) has parsed the rest of the writing into overly proper grammar. I'll get the next book.
    I'm not familiar with Kenji Jasper or Nichelle D. Tramble. (I think I might have a Tramble somewhere in TBR or a shopping cart.)
    This is nice publicity for Gar Anthony Haywood and an accurate description, but that whole series is out of print. He's now writing a new series as Ray Shannon, and that information would certainly be more helpful to the reader.
    I earned an A in Latin American history, and I needed just about everything I learned in it about Mexico to be able to follow the Paco Ignacio Taibo II I read. They're good but hard work.

Joy

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