Good story. You have that middle-period Elmore Leonard story type down cold . Darker than what he writers now, more like CITY PRIMEVAL and SPLIT IMAGES, but I don't think anyone familiar with both of you would mistake you for Leonard either. The voice is just a little different, and your stries always have the specter of the larger biker gang behind what's going on, where he usually stay at the criminal level of the main characters.
That, "larger gang," thing is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. It's one of the themes I keep coming back to, how the 'group' affects the individual and now I wonder if it's a more fundamental Canadian/American difference.
Of course, I'm just looking for something here because the US reviews of Swap/Let It Ride (Publishers Weekly and Booklist so far) have been, um, lukewarm, to put it best and there have been some quite good Canadian reviews.
Some of that is likely just giving the local boy an easy ride, certainly, but I also wonder if the legendary American "rugged individualism" not playing a very big part of my books has anything to do with it?
Not sure what to say about that. I'm not a good barometer of popular American tastes; I've always been a bit of an odd case that.
When my buds were listening to rock, I was doing jazz and classical. About ten years ago, I was setting in a fast food joint trying to place the song playing over the sound system. I could hum it, and knew what came next, but couldn't place it. It was Elton John's original of Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me; I'd only ever heard Maynard Ferguson play it before.
3 comments:
Good story. You have that middle-period Elmore Leonard story type down cold . Darker than what he writers now, more like CITY PRIMEVAL and SPLIT IMAGES, but I don't think anyone familiar with both of you would mistake you for Leonard either. The voice is just a little different, and your stries always have the specter of the larger biker gang behind what's going on, where he usually stay at the criminal level of the main characters.
Thanks Dana, I appreciate that.
That, "larger gang," thing is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. It's one of the themes I keep coming back to, how the 'group' affects the individual and now I wonder if it's a more fundamental Canadian/American difference.
Of course, I'm just looking for something here because the US reviews of Swap/Let It Ride (Publishers Weekly and Booklist so far) have been, um, lukewarm, to put it best and there have been some quite good Canadian reviews.
Some of that is likely just giving the local boy an easy ride, certainly, but I also wonder if the legendary American "rugged individualism" not playing a very big part of my books has anything to do with it?
Not sure what to say about that. I'm not a good barometer of popular American tastes; I've always been a bit of an odd case that.
When my buds were listening to rock, I was doing jazz and classical. About ten years ago, I was setting in a fast food joint trying to place the song playing over the sound system. I could hum it, and knew what came next, but couldn't place it. It was Elton John's original of Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me; I'd only ever heard Maynard Ferguson play it before.
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