Thu 10 Nov 2022
An Archived PI Mystery Review by Bob Adey: RICHARD CLAPPERTON – The Sentimental Kill.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
RICHARD CLAPPERTON – The Sentimental Kill. Peter Fleck #3. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1976. No US edition.
The author’s third novel comes with a dust wrapper blurb which includes review extracts likening his first book to Chandler and his second to Deighton. I couldn’t, frankly, discern such similarity, but I did nevertheless quite enjoy this novel in which Scottish born, Australia based private eye, Peter Fleck, begins the case by acting as protector to former girly magazine publisher, Willie Ansbacher, but spends most of the book trying to locate missing author Temple Wilde.
The connection is that Wilde, now a literary figure of some note, started his career writing Dick Dexter special agent adventures for one of Ansbacher’s early magazines. One particular file copy (of a banned issue) is missing, and perhaps the solution it contained to the then current Dick Dexter adventure could throw light on some more recent real life skullduggery?
Lots of nice twists and turns, and all reasonably logical. Characters interesting, but murderer guessable. I enjoyed it but Chandler or Deighton it isn’t.
November 11th, 2022 at 9:00 pm
It is an unfortunate characteristic of much criticism of popular fiction that too many critics simply default to comparing writers to the only names they can think of in a genre rather than to those who they might actually resemble.
It’s like when someone compares a hardboiled writer to Hammett/Chandler/Cain when those three writers have almost nothing in common but hardboiled fiction. I’ve actually seen a writer compared to Chandler and Spillane for the same reason.
Usually it boils down that the critic just doesn’t differentiate between anyone writing in the first person.
Good review here, and a reminder how treacherous those comparisons can be with no real thought behind them.
November 11th, 2022 at 10:03 pm
The wrong-headed comparisons Bob Adey mentioned must have been really off for him to start out his review the way he did, and I really enjoyed the fact that he did.
I don’t think I’m going to put in a lot of effort to find this book, but I’m tempted to. I enjoy mysteries which are solved by tracking down other books in order to find solutions.