De-lurking momentarily to note that I read my first Raoul
Whitfield this week, and I really enjoyed it.
DEATH IN A BOWL is a nice tight proto-hard-boiled novel. As
most of you know, Whitfield (astonishingly, he has *no*
Wikipedia entry!) was a contemporary of Hammett's; he seems
to have written just three novels but dozens of short stories
(mostly ARGOSY and BLACK MASK, I assume?).
See here for a nice snapshot:
http://knucklelullaby.150m.com/raoulw/raoulwhitfieldhome.html
DEATH IN A BOWL is a murder mystery with a great cast of
characters and locales, mostly taking place in and around
Hollywood. I'm generally not a fan of whodunnits, but in this
case the prose really carried the day for me--it's echt
hard-boiled, and I can't believe no film was ever made of
this one, because it's almost impossible NOT to "see" this
novel in black-and-white as you read it, and some of the
dialogue begs to be heard aloud.
I'm officially putting Whitfield onto my "faves" list, and
will turn to his other two novels real soon (I have the No
Exit editions, which I've found here and there--I note his
stuff is not easy to find.)
Any Whitfield aficionados here?
Best, Mark Nevins
P.S. Tip of the hat to RARA-AVIAN Keith Logan, whose off-List
advice caused me to move Whitfield higher in my stack.
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