Bill,
Re your questions below:
> On the other hand, I do like epics: huge, involved
stories with
lots of
> people, spanning years or decades, where you really
get to know
people,
> and you don't just see them in a moment of crisis,
you get to see
their
> whole lives.
If you're not limiting "epic" to a multi-volume work, I think
Dorothy Uhnak's multi-generational novel about the NYPD, LAW
& ORDER, would qualify. Joseph Wambaugh's first novel,
THE NEW CENTURIONS, only covers about five or six years, but
it still might qualify under your defintion. On the other
side of the fence, there's Mario Puzo's THE GODFATHER. Larry
Collins's BLACK EAGLES spans two decades in the lives of a
DEA agent and a CIA agent working at cross-purposes. Robert
Littel's massive espionage novel, THE COMPANY, which I highly
recommend, covers nothing less than the entire Cold War from
the POV of several generations of CIA and KGB agents.
> Are there any hardboiled epics? I don't mean series,
where each
novel is
> pretty much a self-contained unit, usually with a
hero who gets
mixed up
> in a crime and solves it and then goes home. I mean
something like
> Ellroy's LA Quartet, which is the only example that
comes to mind.
I
> don't know if he intended it to be four parts when
he started, but
it
> hangs together as one big work (albeit one that gets
freakier as it
goes
> along) and by the end it's like you've known Pete
Bondurant all
your life.
> Same for his next books, AMERICAN TABLOID and THE
COLD SIX
THOUSAND, and
> the next one which I think is supposed to wrap up
his history.
If you mean ONLY multi-volume works, I'm surprised no one's
mentioned Max Allan Collins's Nate Heller series. While the
novels are self- contained, aspects of one affect the other,
and they cover a period of decades, as Heller moves from the
Depression-era '30's to the swinging '60's and, in sharp
contrast to Nero and Archie, actually ages in the process.
The first three novels in the series, TRUE DETECTIVE, TRUE
CRIME, and THE MILLION DOLLAR WOUND, form a separate work
which Collins calls his "Nitti Trilogy."
You also might want to try John Gardner's three volume
"Secret" trilogy, THE SECRET GENERATIONS, THE SECRET HOUSES,
and THE SECRET FAMILIES, about an American and a British
family, related by marriage, who each serve democracy in
their respective countries' espionage services. It covers
historical events from just before WW1 until the early '60's.
They're peripherally connected with Gardner's Herbie Kruger
series.
Len Deighton's long-running, inter-connected novels about
Bernard Samson, GAME-SET-MATCH, HOOK-LINE-SINKER, etc., might
qualify.
And, while I'm not sure they'd qualify as hard-boiled, even
given my fairly broad definition, you might consider John Le
Carre's "Karla Trilogy," TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, THE
HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY, and SMILEY'S PEOPLE. Karla, if memory
serves, is something of a gray eminence in the other Smiley
novels as well.
JIM DOHERTY
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