Dennis,
Re your commetns below:
> Golly, the town-tamer plot as you call it has to
have been around
since the
> Greeks.
Maybe, but so what? Hammett still gets full credit for making
it one of the standard plots for PI fiction.
You might as well say that the "quest object" plot goes back
to Malory's stories of King Arthur, or that the hero falling
in love with someone who turns out to be the villainess goes
back to Samson in the Old Testament. Does that make THE
MALTESE FALCON any less influential?
It's because of Hammett that those plot devices became so
common in PI fiction. And any PI who ever tamed a corrupt
town, was traveling a trail already blazed by the Continental
Op.
> As for RED HARVEST, I had remembered it fondly, but
when I reread
it after
> 40 years, it just fell apart for me. Of course I
agree it's still
Hammett
> not Daly, but I simply found I could hardly read
it.
I first read it in high school, but have reread it several
times since. It's always held up for me, better than either
of the other two Op novels, BLOOD MONEY and THE DAIN CURSE
(much though I love both of them). For one thing, the "linked
novelletes" structure of the book, a function of Cap Shaw's
editorial policy regarding serialized novels in BLACK MASK,
is much less evident, the seams much better concealed, than
in the other two books (though not, I'll grant, as well
concealed as in THE GLASS KEY).
For another, its slam-bang action scenes are among the best
ever written, and I happen to love slam-bang action
scenes.
And finally, its first paragraph is one of the best openings
in crime fiction, effectively balancing ironic humor,
colloquial toughness, and a sense of impending danger.
> In that regard, I highly recommend a recent novel by
Jon Jackson
published
> by Dennis MacMillan, GO BY GO. It's nothing less
than Jackson's
conception
> of the novel Hammett should have written instead of
RED HARVEST,
and the reason he never wrote that novel.
I've read GO BY GO. In fact, I own a copy signed by Mr.
Jackson. Good book, but not as good as RED HARVEST.
One thing worth mentioning, given my laudatory comments about
HARVEST's opening lines, is that Hickey Dewey, the
"red-haired mucker" who is the first person the Op ever heard
call Personville "Poisonville," a character never again
referred to in HARVEST or any other Op story, is a major
character in GO BY GO, which opens in a Butte rooming house
called "The Big Ship," also referred to by the Op in that
opening line.
However, just to show that I'm not always in disagreement
with you, I quite concur that Kane Jackson is one of your
best characters. In fact, except for Dan Fortune himself,
Jackson is my favorite of all your PI characters, probably
because he's the most Continental Op- like of them (though
the relentlessly objective third person narration you use in
the Jackson series is more reminiscent of Sam Spade and
FALCON). And you're also right about A DARK POWER being one
of your best books.
JIM DOHERTY
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