--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Nathan Cain"
<IndieCrime@...> wrote:
>
> I watched The Laughing Policeman with the usually
avuncular Walter
> Matthau playing an obsessed detective and Bruce Dern
as his parter
> last night.
Oh, that's interesting! I didn't realize there was an
American film of that; it sounds great. I haven't read the
whole series but I enjoyed TLP a lot. A really interesting
ensemble and a very dry underlying wit, as I recall. The
social commentary/criminal psychology circa 1968 is, of
course, very dated -- in both good and bad ways -- and one of
the things I liked about the book is that you can really see
the writers wrestling (particularly in the wake of the Texas
belltower murders a few years earlier) with the Golden
Age
'rule' that the murderer can't be a maniac but has to be a
rational person with a motive. Nowadays, when books and
movies about serial killers or deranged shooters are a dime a
dozen, it's sobering to realize this was once a fairly new
idea.
-Carrie
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