Created by Dorothy Francis It’s a hell of a way to become a private eye. KATIE HASSWORTH was an English teacher in Miami who resigned after a school shooting (back when it wasn’t a regular occurrence), in which she was wounded a few years ago. Seems a student with some serious “issues” brought a gun … Continue reading Katie Hassworth
Tag: Standalone
PaPa LaBas
Created by Ishmael Reed (1938-) Ishmael Reed's headspinning Mumbo Jumbo (1972) is mish-mash of Black pride, righteous anger, fingerpointing and, um, Footloose? It's also, if you look at it in just the right light, a private eye story. It’s the early 1920s, Warren Harding is president, membership in the Ku Klux Klan is growing, ragtime is morphing into jazz, … Continue reading PaPa LaBas
One and Done
Some Great Private Eyes Who've Appeared in Only One Novel Although the success and popularity of the literary private eye seems to be built on series characters, there have been some memorable private eyes who've only appeared in one novel. We even once polled readers of this site back in 1998, although we’ve slowly added … Continue reading One and Done
George Webb
Created by Graham Swift "The things people ask you to do..." Who'd a thunk it? Remember, at the end of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, when Sam Spade tells Brigid O'Shaughnessy, just as she's being carted off to prison, that he would wait for her? Well, with that concept in mind, Booker Prize-winning author Graham Swift … Continue reading George Webb
Max Klein
Created by Paul Benjamin (pseud. of Paul Auster) "I had come to the limit of myself, and there was nothing left." Once upon a time Paul Auster, the high-falutin' literary author of The New York Trilogy, a three-part philosophical and literary tour-de-force, was once grounded enough to write a simple, meat-and-potatoes P.I. novel paperback original. Mind … Continue reading Max Klein
Alan Macklin (Sylvia)
Created by E.V. Cunningham Pseudonym of Howard Fast (1914-2003) "There can be nothing as cold and deadly as an evening of pedagogues frozen in their timidity of thought and multifold institutional fears, or pompous and irrational in their half-knowledge and their book-bound ignorance. . . ." Howard Fast is yet another now-famous author who dabbled … Continue reading Alan Macklin (Sylvia)