 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Just so that there's no confusion, Dana - all the series I talked about are by the same writer, Lawrence Block. And
thanks for the further suggestions. I love the idea of competing series of novels starring hit men! Keller is also the hero, though he's no, um, hero. But he is just a guy with a nasty job and a hobby collecting stamps.
By the by, Lawrence Block (like so many writers) has a good website that sorts out his series. Here's the Scudder page.
https://lawrenceblock.com/series/scudder/
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Aug 12, 2019 - 4:49 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Dana Wilcox
(Member)
|
Just so that there's no confusion, Dana - all the series I talked about are by the same writer, Lawrence Block. And
thanks for the further suggestions. I love the idea of competing series of novels starring hit men! Keller is also the hero, though he's no, um, hero. But he is just a guy with a nasty job and a hobby collecting stamps.
By the by, Lawrence Block (like so many writers) has a good website that sorts out his series. Here's the Scudder page.
https://lawrenceblock.com/series/scudder/
I stand corrected: Haven't read Block's printed work, but I did see the film, A Walk Among the Tombstones, with Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder. Enjoyed the film, but did the movie do justice to the book?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I stand corrected: Haven't read Block's printed work, but I did see the film, A Walk Among the Tombstones, with Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder. Enjoyed the film, but did the movie do justice to the book?
I didn't watch it because of what I read about how it interpreted Scudder and kind of mixed up the plots of a couple books. I don't think Block was disappointed, except in its poor performance, but it soured me on the film. I will have to give it a chance, a shame I waited til it left Netflix.
By the way, my all time favorite series is now and probably always will be Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series. Both my kind of thing and maybe my favorite narrator - the inimitable Archie Goodwin. Block himself was such a fan that he created a couple of pastiche/parodies in short story form mostly, but it's not really his own style at all - except that love for NYC.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mitch, I love The Saint novels! My local library (in Littleton, Colorado, which gives you a sense of the place) had a large set of original hardbacks, and I went through them like wildfire when I was a teenager. Even tried my hand at a pastiche, but it just came out painfully wordy. So disappointed when I watched Roger Moore in syndication - just didn't have the spark of books like The Last Hero and The Avenging Saint.
I'm also a fan of Hall's Quiller books, even though they can be pretty unrelenting. But I don't know Trevor's other work, and my gosh he wrote an insane number of books. On the list he goes!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Aug 13, 2019 - 3:39 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
|
Mitch, I love The Saint novels! My local library (in Littleton, Colorado, which gives you a sense of the place) had a large set of original hardbacks, and I went through them like wildfire when I was a teenager. Even tried my hand at a pastiche, but it just came out painfully wordy. So disappointed when I watched Roger Moore in syndication - just didn't have the spark of books like The Last Hero and The Avenging Saint.
I'm also a fan of Hall's Quiller books, even though they can be pretty unrelenting. But I don't know Trevor's other work, and my gosh he wrote an insane number of books. On the list he goes!
I have to Google Littleton *... sorry, but this Limey has no idea of the name 
I'm re-reading (and disposing of) my collection of novels and I've left the Saint ones from #3:The Last Hero (1930) - #9:Getaway (1932) until now (i.e. not re-read in order ...)
As for Adam Hall / Elleston Trevor (and a few other pseudonyms) ... after the first few Quiller novels I sought out other titles by this prolific author. I rarely dislike any of his works though not all of them satisfy ... but I like his narrative style even when the story is less than engrossing. I've just started to re-read The Domesday Story (1952) which didn't leave a great impression a decade or so ago. But others like Chorus of Echoes (1950), Expressway (1973), The Burning Shore (1961) and The Pillars of Midnight (1957) - this was my first non-Quiller novel - are worth a few hours. And his take on WWI: Bury Him Among Kings (1970) was a fabulous read. There are more than a dozen titles I've yet to obtain ...
* the birthplace of Dave Grusin
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I have to Google Littleton *... sorry, but this Limey has no idea of the name
I just meant it was a "little town" - a suburb actually, that had about 20% of the population it has now, by the way.
Trevor ain't gonna be that easy to find here in my neck of the colonies - only the Quiller books are on kindle (I pretty much only read ebooks these days), and the library system in the state has precious little - I'll have to keep checking the akas.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Speaking of great disturbing novels, you can't beat a couple of Donald Westlake later-career thrillers: The Axe and The Hook. The Hook especially, a superior reworking of the core idea in Strangers on a Train, is brilliant in the best and nastiest ways. (Neither of these qualify as detective novels, more like heightened examples in print of the kinds of TV movies Levinson and Link produced after Columbo, starting with the first-rate Murder by Natural Causes.)
The Chain I don't know but I'll have a look. There was an excellent piece on this on NPR recently:
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/14/740848163/new-thriller-the-chain-has-an-origin-almost-as-exciting-as-its-plot
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Aug 14, 2019 - 5:44 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
MikeP
(Member)
|
Glad to see at least one mention of the Lew Archer series by Ross MacDonald. Most of them are simply great. To this day I still remember the last paragraph to "The Doomsters" . If you haven't read any of them, what are you waiting for?
And an underrated series is from the late Stuart Kaminsky, following the (mis)adventures of Toby Peters in 1940's Hollywood. Stuff like Never Cross A Vampire and Murder On The Yellow Brick Road find the low rent , good hearted Peters getting involved with the biggest Hollywood names of the golden era. The Marx Brothers, Judy Garland, Hemmingway, Clark Gable, Bela Lugosi and more. The books are extremely well done, with a great feel for the era and always capturing the flavor of the movie stars, directors and writers who call on Peters for help. Although the stories can be exciting and hilarious, they also have a wonderful melancholy in the main character of Peters. He's a good guy, not the brightest or smartest, but always the guy you can depend on to do his best, even if his best sometimes isn't good enough. He's still sadly in love with his ex wife, his big brother is a cop and pretty much hates his cheap gumshoe younger brother, and Peters may save the day - sometimes barely - but he never learns from his mistakes.
The books have been reprinted several times, I think they're all available as Ebooks now. They're really well worth trying out.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I think Pronzini has recently ended the Nameless series, but, imo, it peaked in the 1990s. As you mentioned, it just wasn't the same when it started having multiple narrators. Pronzini's skill at both story-telling and descriptive writing appears to have deserted him in the later novels.
It so happens that I just finished Snatch, the first in Pronzini's Nameless series. So this post has been lodged in my mind for a few days. Just to show how contrary readers can be, it was his descriptive writing that wore me out.
His seemingly endless description of the estate he visits at the beginning, the block-by-block scene tailing a suspect - that kind of thing drove me crazy. Many of the descriptions were not additive - didn't help me better understand the characters, have a clearer sense of the plot. The descriptions of the detective's home, his smoking and coughing and worries, etc - those helped me get a better grasp of the character. But so much of the descriptive writing was just empty of content, including all the tiresomely distinctive descriptions of San Fran fog, that he half lost me. (Though I thought the plot was excellent.)
Some people love descriptive writing, and I get that. Me, I'm more interested in the Elmore Leonard school, as evidenced by the last three of his ten rules for good writing.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Aug 19, 2019 - 12:26 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Essankay
(Member)
|
Joan, another series I've enjoyed is Simenon's Maigret, about the Parisian police inspector, although at 70+ novels and assorted short stories I don't necessarily recommend trying to read them all. They do start to run together after a while.
Chester Himes' series featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, a pair of Harlem police detectives, I find very appealing. Be aware that Himes' treatment of women is definitely retrograde, but the books are comic and fairly cartoonish, all the characters little more than caricatures. Still, I like their caustic tone.
And if you haven't read Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series, about the black L.A. detective, I urge you to give them a try. I have to confess I haven't kept up with the series (for a variety of reasons) but the first seven or eight are really good.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
