Today marks Bill Pronzini’s 70
th birthday, and so
I wanted to join in the discussion on the blogosphere with my own tribute to
the author. Pronzini is a well-known and respected author, but he’s something
of a rarity on the modern mystery scene: he knows
a lot about the genre’s history. His collection of books and pulp
magazines is massive, and he has written and contributed to several reference
volumes, including three books on “alternative classics” (i.e. books so bad
that they become good):
Gun in Cheek,
Son of Gun in Cheek, and
Six-Gun in Cheek (the final volume specifically
on Westerns). He and his wife Marcia Muller teamed up to create a classic
reference volume,
1001 Midnights. And
his output as a writer and editor is extremely prolific.
One of the best things about Bill Pronzini is his fairness
to both “sides” of the genre. He can praise John Dickson Carr and Raymond Chandler
in the same sentence, and his praise will be articulate and intelligent. Pronzini’s
enthusiasm for the hardboiled/noir subgenre got me interested in reading more
works in such a vein. Recently, I read the book
Books to Die For, a book which I have criticised heavily for a
variety of reasons. However, certain individual contributions are brilliant.
Pronzini’s was one of them. He chose to talk about an author I’d never heard of
before, Elliott Chaze, and his novel
Black
Wings Has My Angel.
