Thanks, Kevin, Mark, Bill, MrT and Jim for your thoughts on
Michael Collins. I lucked out and found copies of ACT OF FEAR
and SHADOW OF A TIGER at my local (Philly) library yesterday.
I'm in for some happy reading this weekend.
Mark, you wrote:
> The character was
> fully developed and his politics were completely
interwoven in the
> stories -- no harangues as sidebars (not that I
don't enjoy Travis's
> sermons).
You've nailed the appeal for me--there are no lengthy asides,
but social commentary is right there within the story,
unobtrusive yet memorable. For the first couple of pages of
TOADS, I was excited not so much by the plot but Collins's
voice, and it reminded me of why I love first-person PI
novels: the chance to hang out with someone cool for 200
pages.
And of course, maybe I'm partial to Dan Fortune (nee
Fortunowski) because he's Polish...
I must have Collinses on the brain. Right now, I'm reading
SPREE by Max Allan Collins, and it's terrific. I'm very much
digging the Nolan series. I second that thanks to Charles at
Hard Case for bringing these babies back to print.
Bill: I'm drooling over that double-signed copy of QUARRY'S
LIST. Maybe we need to hire Nolan to sneak into your library
late one night...
--Duane Swierczynski
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # 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 : 12 Jun 2004 EDT