I don't think I've read any Wambaugh, and I'm not sure why not. I love a good procedural.
I said I'm sorry. I've made mistakes, but fear was never one of them.
Lilah ,'Conviction (1)'
We're Literary 2: To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Jesse - Feb 25, 2004 12:48:55 pm PST #960 of 10002
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
DavidS - Feb 25, 2004 12:53:52 pm PST #961 of 10002
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
I don't think I've read any Wambaugh, and I'm not sure why not. I love a good procedural.
Well, because he's not so much about police procedurals. He was a cop for some twenty years, and he wrote novels about that. So there's crime solving but it's often just about crime and cops' lives.
Jesse - Feb 25, 2004 12:57:43 pm PST #962 of 10002
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
Hmm. I should still check him out. I enjoy the crime and the cops. When I set off on my project to read the "classics," I didn't get as far as the 70s, so I really should.
DavidS - Feb 25, 2004 1:02:01 pm PST #963 of 10002
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
Hmm. I should still check him out. I enjoy the crime and the cops. When I set off on my project to read the "classics," I didn't get as far as the 70s, so I really should.
Go into a used bookstore and you should see a big rack of 'em cheap. They were best sellers. You'd like The Onion Field, The Choirboys, The Blue Knight, The New Centurions, The Black Marble.
Jesse - Feb 25, 2004 1:09:57 pm PST #964 of 10002
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
I'll go to the library first. I'm not a big book-buyer. But thanks for the recs!
deborah grabien - Feb 25, 2004 1:27:04 pm PST #965 of 10002
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.
The Onion Field is one of my favourite novels. He really knows his stuff, and you can tell just how deep he lived in it, too.
Plus? As I remember him, a beautiful, beautiful stylist to read.
erikaj - Feb 25, 2004 1:32:51 pm PST #966 of 10002
Always Anti-fascist!
Wrod. "The Black Marble" is even romantic..probably set me up for MunchnKay.
DavidS - Feb 25, 2004 1:34:19 pm PST #967 of 10002
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
Wrod. "The Black Marble" is even romantic..probably set me up for MunchnKay.
There's a movie of this, btw, with Paul Prentiss and I think...Robert Foxworth?
deborah grabien - Feb 25, 2004 1:35:39 pm PST #968 of 10002
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.
Paula Prentiss. Yup.
I remember being disappointed in the movie of Onion Field, just because nothing out there could come within light years of the book.
DavidS - Feb 25, 2004 1:49:24 pm PST #969 of 10002
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
Did I miss a discussion of the Salon article where the reviewer slagged (what he thought was) the overinflated literary reputation of mysteries?
The problem, I came to realize, is that all detective series seem to require two items that run counter to literary values and that, no matter what the author's skills (clean prose, social or psychological observation, plot construction), will artistically doom it. The first is the main character, who is invariably romanticized or sentimentalized and who is always a combination of three not especially interesting things: toughness, efficacy and sensitivity. (When the writer resists applying any or all of these traits, the character ends up being bland.) The second is the very formulaic quality that lets a book be part of a series. Similar things happen in similar ways, which is probably as apt a definition as you'll ever find of how not to make good literature. Chandler -- not to mention Arthur Conan Doyle -- got away with it because he was a genius and an original, Macdonald because he was gifted and started early in the day. Their successors have no such luck.
I know folks are likely to dismiss any such genre-wide slapdown, but I wonder if there isn't some truth in this. I've often felt like mysteries have the imprimatur of literary approval that fantasy and science fiction doesn't get, and that overpraising mysteries allows the hypothetical (and perhaps mythical) Snobby Reader a chance to slum with the entertaining reads without guilt.