I recently read Paul Cain's SEVEN SLAYERS, the collection of
seven of Cain's 1930s Black Mask stories. Maybe it's because
of my high expectations before reading it, due to Cain's huge
hard-boiled reputation, but I found myself disappointed with
many of the stories. While certainly readable, the writing
style makes them feel unmemorable. The stories are made up
predominantly of dialogue and descriptions of characters'
actions. The dialogue is admirably terse, but is also rather
flat and functional. The shortcomings of the style become
particularly apparent in the stories with many characters
('Pineapple', 'Murder in Blue'), where you realise that there
is little characterisation to differentiate them. The best
story, IMO, was 'Pigeon Blood'. In this one, it felt like
Cain was allowing his style to ease out a bit; there's more
description of the settings, and the characterisation is much
sharper.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 28 Aug 2004 EDT