This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email (4,302) list on Friday, January 26, 2018. Hi, Unseasonably warm weather in East Tennessee last weekend allowed us to check on the beehives, and I am happy to report that both of my hives have bees! This is good news. The biggest challenge a beekeeper has • Read More »
The place to look for the origins of the literary private eye is in 19th century France with the character of Eugene Francois Vidocq.
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (4,379) on Friday, Jan. 19, 2018. Hi, Winter has settled in in a big way in my part of the world. Plenty of time for indoor activities, the most important of which is reading. But that’s not the only one. Some writing and some painting • Read More »
Just when the reading world thought that the hard-boiled detective novel had reached its zenith with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, along comes Ross Macdonald. The similarities among the lives of Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald (whose real name was Kenneth Millar) are striking and significant: All had difficult and disruptive childhoods. Each, for a time, • Read More »
Raymond Chandler brought a level of emotional complexity to his characters that had never been seen before in hard-boiled detective fiction.
Sue Grafton’s private eye, Kinsey Millhone, has taken her place beside Hammett’s Sam Spade, Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, and Macdonald’s Lew Archer.
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (4,431) on Friday, Dec. 29, 2017. Hi, A lot of you readers took the time to respond to various parts of the newsletter last week, and I have included some of those responses here. Thanks to you all. Your responses make great reading, and I • Read More »
Dashiell Hammett knew what a private detective should be. He knew because he had been one, and he had been taught by the very best. Born in Maryland in 1894, Hammett had failed at most everything he tried in the first two decades of his life. Intelligent, tall, and handsome, he did not finish school, • Read More »
The opening scene of Raymond Chandler’s story Trouble is My Business tells you a lot in a very few words about Chandler’s “private eye,” Phillip Marlowe. Marlow is talking to a woman who runs a detective agency, a big one with several agents. But none of her people is suitable for the job she has. • Read More »