Saturday, August 18, 2012

For Ed McBain Fans

Over on Do Some Damage Scott D. Parker posts an older review of The Gutter and The Grave by Ed McBain. One of the paragraphs sums up Evan Hunter's McBain career with fitting spirit and dash.

Remarking on how the line goes from Hammett to Chandler and then on to succeeding generations, Parker says:

"By the time Ed McBain began writing fiction, this tradition was decades old. McBain scanned the landscape, saw what was what, judged the speed of the moving traffic, and merged right in, going zero to sixty in seconds. And he never looked back, even when he changed lanes. Everyone else had to swerve to get out of the way of this fast-moving car whose driver knew exactly what he wanted and where he wanted to go."

Perfect-o!

3 comments:

Mathew Paust said...

The old 87th has never been the same.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Always told a good story.

RJR said...

The line of succession from Hammett/Chandler/Macdonald to Robert B. Parker goes right through Bill Pronzini and Michael Collins, who kept the genre alive until the boom of the 80's.

RJR