--- Dick Lochte <
dlochte@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hardboiled? Soft-boiled? Parboiled? I suppose
it's
> in the mind of the
> reader. But I think some (not all) of
Francis'
> novels are filled with too
> much sadistic violence and detailed torture,
too
> many depressed heroes with
> wives or relatives dying of cancer or living in
iron
> lungs, too many animal
> mutilations, too many truly sociopathic villains
to
> be put in the
> Christie-Queen-Stout category. And if the Sid
Halley
> novels aren't
> hardboiled, with the hapless
jockey-turned-private
> detective getting more of
> his destroyed hand lopped off in each, then I'd
be
> hard-pressed to come up
> with a book that is.
***************************************************** I'm not
saying he's not good, Dick, I'm just saying from my opinion,
I wouldn't call his work 'hard boiled.' Topically, he has
more in common with Ellery Queen than he does with Chandler
or Spillane. His plots are generally better than Queen's by a
long shot, though, and for the most part, better than
Spillane's, too. Francis has a ways to go in several
directions before he's in Chandler's league, however.
Patrick King
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