Re Mr Lynds's comments below:
> If I can put in my newcomer's two-cents, a few
years
> ago I reread all of
> Hammet's novels, and RED HARVEST does not stand
up.
> It's cliched and
> terribly dated.
With all due respect to our honored guest (by the way,
welcome; great to have you here) whose opinions (at least the
non-political ones) I respect and usually agree with, RED
HARVEST is nothing less than one of the best PI novels ever
written and, with the obvious exception of THE MALTESE
FALCON, Hammett's best novel.
Moreover, the basic "town-tamer" plot is as influential on
later PI fiction, in its way, as FALCON's "Holy Grail" or
"The Wench-dunit" storylines.
Years later, the "lone PI rides into a corrupt rural area and
cleans house" plot has been used by Brett Halliday in A TASTE
FOR VIOLENCE, Robert Parker in PALE KINGS AND PRINCES, Cleve
Adams in SABOTAGE, Jack Lynch in THE MISSING AND THE DEAD,
Mickey SPillane in THE TWISTED THING, etc, etc. Substitute
"cop" for
"PI" and you can add William Diehl's HOOLIGANS, Stephen
Hunter's HOT SPRINGS, Fred Bean's BLACK GOLD, Matt Braun's
ONE LAST TOWN, Horace McCoy's "The Mopper-Up," etc, etc. An
if you just make the town-tamer a non-specific "lone heroic
figure" and you can add films like LAST MAN STANDING and
DESPERADO.
The "town-tamer" plot may not particularly resonate with you,
and a lot of the stories deriving from HARVEST may be dreck,
but no story or novel that wields that much influence can be
totally without worth.
> On the other hand I was totally
> surprised by THE THIN MAN.
> If you read it carefully, and try to forget
the
> movie, it's a pretty damn
> good novel with much to say. The three in
the
> middle hold up just fine, and
> THIN MAN deserves a reassessment, Robert Parker
to
> the contrary.
I don't find THE THIN MAN a chore to read, but it's light
fare compared to RED HARVEST.
As for Jack's comments, that started this whole thread, the
thing to remember is that the worst of Hammett and Chandler
should not necessarily be compared to their best work, but to
the work of other writers plowing the same field.
By that standard, even the worst of Hammett and Chandler
holds up damned well today. It only seems disappointing
compared to their best (and most often reprinted)
stuff.
JIM DOHERTY
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