For me, the cooler weather corresponds to the time when I'm more likely to pick up a nice, big, heavy book and hunker down with it. The first book of fall for me was Lawrence Sanders' breakthrough, THE FIRST DEADLY SIN, copyright 1973.
A little background: I had generally liked Sanders but found his work uneven. Some of the stand-alones were interesting and creepy, but I could not stand the foppish McNally, on whom Sanders focused later in his career and prior to his death.
I am, however, a big fan of Captain Edward X. Delaney of Manhattan's 251st Precinct. I rarely read every book by any given author, but my wife and I stopped at a diner a month or so ago, and we were served two massive and sloppy sandwiches that were delicious but not easy to eat. This put Delaney back into my mind, with his penchant for eating sloppy sandwiches over the sink. I looked over the shelves for a book in the Delaney series I hadn't read, then found a nice first edition hardcover for 5 bucks.
Reading the book 38 years after its publication, I found myself asking a lot of questions.
1. Would this book be published today? That's the $64,000 question. At 566 pages, it is much, much too long. Nothing happens for the first hundred pages, the plot doesn't kick into gear until page 200, and the pace doesn't pick up until page 400. If this manuscript crossed my desk today, I would send it back to agent or editor with a note saying, "Trim 250-300 pages and send it back to me." True, Sanders does spend the first couple of hundred pages leisurely exploring/building character, but I don't think readers have the time, or the patience, for that any longer. For this reason, and a few others I'll get into below, I don't think the book has aged well.
2. Am I a prude? I don't think I am. I like hardboiled and can handle some rough stuff. But this book contains two scenes that are so objectionable and perverted that I almost had to put the book down. I exclaimed on both occasions to my wife, "What the hell is Sanders doing?" The scenes are not only upsetting, they are also completely gratuitous and add nothing to the plot. I could have suggested one simple change to the author what would have made the inclusion on the borderline of acceptability. I look back and think, "Well, this was the early 1970s, and the sexual revolution was in full swing," so maybe I'm being hypersensitive? But I don't think I am, and I think that if the manuscript had come across my desk in 1972, I think I would have gotten to the aforementioned scenes, then perhaps called the police.
3. What makes a book timeless vs. time-specific? This isn't a question I pondered in detail; it's really more a way of pointing out that reading The First Deadly Sin is like going back to New York City, frozen in time in the early 1970s. Those who visit the city (or live there) today may not remember the incredible cesspool of filth and danger it was at that time, when 5 homicides were committed per day within city limits. Sanders really captures the Manhattan of that time, when people were home by dark and rarely walked down a street, even in the best neighborhoods, without looking over their shoulders. It was also a time when a police chief could afford to own a four- or five-story brownstone on the east side on an officer's salary. I thought Sanders also captured the Bohemian aspects of the City well; those are as much in evidence today as they were then. But the New York of The First Deadly Sin is an ugly place. Today, New York City has gay marriage; in this book, cops rattle off the list of undesirables who come out at night: "rapists, murders, flashers, voyeurs, pedophiles, homosexuals." Needless to say, there are almost no women on the force, except those who work undercover to catch prostitutes or serve as proxies when women decoys are needed.
To my surprise and disappointment, Captain Delaney doesn't eat sandwiches over the sink in this earliest installment, though he does enjoy a good sandwich fairly regularly - as well as good amounts of booze, even on the job.
It's also a dark book, not really shocking given the book's title. But this one is much darker than the others I remember reading. Also, interestingly, I found myself having to consult various lists of the deadly sins. One list had "Lust" as the first one - and that fits quite a bit with the book, especially the first two thirds. But it turns out that the sin in question is actually "Pride," in the sense of arrogance. In that way, Sanders has Delaney match wits with a criminal who is, perhaps, the dark side of Delaney himself, and I found that interesting, if a bit heavy-handed.
Next on my list, I'm going back even further, to Erle Stanley Gardner. I've decided I need to get back to the greats, because too much of what I've been reading lately has been so disappointing. Perhaps, though, with NaNoWriMo looming, I can look forward to the next Janet Evanovich or Mary Higgins Clark crossing my desk in the new year.
Was "...with NaNoWriMo looming, I can look forward to the next Janet Evanovich or Mary Higgings Clark..." said tongue-in-cheek?
Posted by: ccc | November 03, 2011 at 09:32 AM
Are you poking fun at NaNoWriMo? From your posts you don't seem the Evanovich or Clark type.
Posted by: Jess | November 06, 2011 at 07:42 PM