Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin quted on Galleycat today:

"Books are social vectors, but publishers have been slow to see it. They barely even noticed book clubs until Oprah goosed them. But then the stupidity of the contemporary, corporation-owned publishing company is fathomless: they think they can sell books as commodities."

CLIFTON ADAMS

August West over at Vintage Hardboiled Reads http://vinpulp.blogspot.com/ writes a fine review of of Death's Sweet Song, one of Clifton Adams' two Gold Medal crime novels. I sure agree with his admiration for Adams' crime books and, like August, wish he'd written more.

But many of you are saying Clifton who? Back in the days when western fiction was popular (and reasonably respectable to all but snobs) Adams wrote a novel called The Desperado, which Donald Westlake has spoken of admiringly (though not, understandably, of its poor sequel Return of The Desperado).

Adams was a jazz musician and a working writer. Never a star, he had to work all over the place and with varying degrees of creative success. He did a number of books that were competent but overly familiar but at least half of his considerable output was first-rate and two or three books were, in my estimation, were of the highest order.

Try A Partnership With Death and A Dangerous Profession. True hardboiled westerns.