Wrod. "The Black Marble" is even romantic..probably set me up for MunchnKay.

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?

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.

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.

Well, if all the main characters are so inevitably flawed, there might be a point.

Do you think they are?

Overpraising? Are you kidding? I'm still embarassed half the time when people ask me what I'm reading.

To the Snobby Reader, if science fiction and fantasy are in the gutter, mysteries have only barely made it to the curb.

I'm with Jesse. (Still struggling with "That's genre, isn't it?" issue.) Maybe they get a bit more respect than the others, but it's like gonorrhea vs. syphillis(and I can't believe I typed that.)Ginger's metaphor's classier...I'm just Tacky Tackerman lately.

who is always a combination of three not especially interesting things: toughness, efficacy and sensitivity.

One of the most gripping Josephine Teys (not telling which) ends with the detective realizing that the detective fingered entirely the wrong person for the crime, and that there is no way for the detective to rectify this mistake. The detective isn't particularly tough, either.

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.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear dear dear. Very bad time for me to read this, because I'm cooking and cleaning and can't stay online. However, listen carefully enough and you'll hear my teeth grinding.

So, warning: cranky ahead, which you must have known that would trigger.

I think that stuff about literary slumming is crap, frankly. Which mysteries have snob value? Simenon, and Conan Doyle, and PD James, and they're the only ones I can think of. Simenon gets it for creating an unforgettable character in a blisteringly real Paris that changes with time, and for writing about the workings of the human mind as it talks to human motivation, rather than tossing clues about. Conan Doyle? Holmes is not likeable, he's a drug addict and a misogynist, but say "my dear Watson" and there's an entire universe becomes visible, gaslight and hooves clattering over cobblestones and the entire panoply of London in the time of Jack the Ripper. And James? About as unsentimental and crisp as it's possible to get, when she's on. Plus commander Phyllis Dorothy James of Scotland Yard has some cred at her back.

But I'm really curious about which fantasy and/or scifi writer you think isn't getting that snob value or, at least, being taken seriously. Tolkein? Heinlein? Asimov?

I don't buy it. I've spent thirty-plus years listening to people drop their voices to awestruck hush levels when discussing scifi and fantasy.