You are right about Ross Thomas drawing on his background. On
the one hand, he operated in the mixed world of public
affairs and elections (for public office and for union
leadership) and public relations both in the U.S. (especially
Washington) and internationally. This is a world I know
something about and he is quite wonderful in portraying it.
Only Ward Just is his rival in having a realistic Washington
as a setting. I am reasonably certain he was at times drawing
"a second check" from an intelligence agency as the CIA, to
name one, often utilized people with natural covers as Thomas
had with his day job.
As for Woolrich, I agree that his real world experience was
quite limited but he mined his internal fears and terrors
very successfully. I will post more on Woolrich later today
as we wrap up his month.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "jacquesdebierue"
<jacquesdebierue@...> wrote:
>
> I think experience can be very useful, but what
counts is the
> psychologial realism of the story. We are just
wrapping up a month
> about Woolrich, a guy who surely made up stories,
yet they mostly
> work psychologically and are often
spellbinding.
>
> On the other hand, I am sure that Ross Thomas was
drawing on
> first-hand experience when he wrote many of his
books. I can just
> sense it as I read him. Perhaps I've been fooled...
With Aarons, I
> can't tell if he draws on experience or not, though
obviously he
did
> research.
>
> Best,
>
> mrt
>
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