Festivity, Revels, and Nocturnal Dalliances
When people who don’t have much first-hand experience with reading hardboiled detective fiction imitate the style, they’re imitating Mickey Spillane. Every sentence is boiling over with hate and disgust. Every thought is of violence.
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Peter Fleming is fated to forever be referred to by his full legal name, “Peter Fleming, Older Brother of James Bond Creator Ian Fleming.”
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Kim is the sort of hardboiled detective story that the pulp paperback industry could produce in its sleep, peppered with enough fist-fights, shoot-outs, and sex to keep the slim volume well-packed.
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Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi is the first in a series of Indiana Jones novels, published after the movies and relaying the adventures of Indy as a young man during the 1920s.
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Kingsley Amis’ Colonel Sun was the first James Bond book written entirely after the death of Ian Fleming. Amis sends Bond to Greece to foil a Chinese mastermind and delights in abusing M.
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Donald E. Westlake, best known for his “Parker” series of thrillers, was hired to write a James Bond movie. In the end, the script was not used, but Westlake reworked the story into an original novel.
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On the surface, The Wicker Man is the story of one police constable’s attempt to scrooge up a town’s May Day revelries. Delving deeper into its waters, however, is aided by a few key texts that informed the film.
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