--- On Thu, 6/12/08, jacquesdebierue <
jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote:
Curious... I use the Ws in the same sequence. Sara Gran will
be no doubt pleased that I followed her noir _Dope_ with
Wodehouse's _Uncle Fred in the Springtime_. It's a guaranteed
upper... as are Westlake's Dortmunder books.
************************************************************************
Yeah, DOPE is intense, isn't it? Gran's writing style has
been compared to Raymond Chandler's and I kind of get that
linguistically. But her story is closer to Thompson or
Woolrich. The intense description of the life-style reminds
me a little of Jayne Loader's BETWEEN PICTURES without
Loader's humor. Josephine Flannigan is one of the least
likely heroines I've encountered but the more I learned about
her the more I was drawn into her story. I think it was a
very challenging decision to make the protagonist a
shoplifter and pickpocket, then slowly give us enough
information about her to makes us like her and care about
what happens to her. That's one of the hardest things I've
seen a writer do, and Gran did it here very
successfully.
Patrick King
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