This weekend, I managed to read Ross MacDonald's Black Money and Denise Mina's Field of Blood.
McDonald is often seen as the literary heir to Chandler and Hammett. I like Chandler very much, Hammett less so, but I'm starting to think I don't like their literary heirs very much. (I'm not a huge fan of Robert Parker either). It felt like MacDonald's style is based on the most obvious characteristics of Chandler's style -- the striking similes and the trenchant dialogue. And the book is well-written on a scene-by-scene level. But Chandler always feels like he's aiming at a moral note that's somehow missing from Black Money. It is a pretty late work for MacDonald, and maybe I'll go back and read one of his earlier books that established his reputation in the first place.
Field of Blood is less a murder novel than a novel that happens to have a murder in it. It's more a coming-of-age novel for its protagonist Paddy Meehan, who wants to become a reporter. She's having a tough time fighting the sexism of the department and of her family and fiance (who don't think she should have a job) when she stumbles into a story about the murder of an infant. On a sheer page-count basis, if nothing else, her investigation is a small part of the story, which deals a lot more with her relationships with her family and fiance.
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