Hard-boiled egghead (pun)

As you know, Leading Opinion enjoys hard-boiled detective fiction. (Or maybe it's clearer to say, fiction in the hard-boiled detective genre.) However one best says it, I just finished three of those kinds of books.

Mark Coggins writes a blog at sfgate and he writes detective fiction. Runoff is set in San Francisco and is fun to imagine if you've spent any time in the City. The plot was really creative and the twists and turns showed an intelligent ability to craft a good story. But Coggins writes like a college essayist. His language, his style, is not very individual. And that takes something away from the curt insights of hard-boiled characters.

Michael Raleigh writes about Chicago. Death in Uptown is very good and it has all the weird twists good detective rags need. And his insights and descriptions are very good. But Uptown, like so many other detective novels, is mostly about the case and only strays into those interesting departures in thought and observation that demonstrate the calculus of the detective: A lonely person who solves crimes at the edge of civility because they are compelled to correct injustice in the shadows.

Such departures add to the twists and turns, because the detective as an ordinary, flawed guy necessarily contributes to the confusion and the circus of events. Hammett found it, Chandler perfected it, Spillane condensed it to one line. Granted, that’s pretty fast company. And to be fair to Coggins and Raleigh, maybe the editors excise all that good stuff because the average reader needs 6th-grade level. Whatever the case, it’s like The Mad Scientists Club—great, especially when that was my level. But I’m older now, and I expect more literary effort.

Then there’s James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss. Absent are all the limitations I note; all the strengths I admire are present. It’s very good. The case gets solved in the middle, which tells you everything you need to know. Back to the edge of your seat—there's MORE!