Wodehouse, with a dollop or two of Saki, or maybe John Collier, thrown in - and, like garlic and rutabagas, is an acquired taste.” Gladys Mitchell is Pronzini’s target in Chapter Five: “…Mitchell’s prose is of the eccentric variety, to put it mildly - something of a cross between Christie and P. Gun in Cheek is an amusing and pleasurable reading experience as well as an enlightening guide to hardboiled potboilers.īut they’re not all hardboiled. Within these categories, in what can only be called a labor of love, Bill Pronzini discusses, digests, and shares the best of the worst - adding a wonderfully comprehensive bibliography for advanced and dedicated devotees. In fact, I enjoyed it most when it seemed to be at its most serious-giving facts and background rather than trying to provide passages that I thought sure were supposed to be funny.but weren't.Gun in Cheek is … a delightful exploration of what the author refers to as “alternative crime fiction.” Less kindly put, it is a unique crash course in the worst English and American crime fiction of the twentieth century.Įvery category of mystery fiction is represented: the private eye, the stately home, the arch-villain, the gentleman sleuth, the amateur spy, and many others who have blossomed from the genre. He also provides details on the development of the various subgenres and his comments on various authors and their characters is often more entertaining than the passages he quotes. For example, the interesting chapter giving background on Phoenix Press. The best of the book seems to me to be the tidbits of publishing history that Pronzini gives us along the way.
(from Killers Are My Meat by Stephen Marlowe)
She was as lovely as a girl could be without bludgeoning your endocrines. After all, hard boiled detective stories seem to corner the market on outlandish descriptions such as this: Most passages were either examples of just plain bad writing or (especially in the hard boiled line) it seemed like business as usual. I just honestly didn't find many instances where the passages were so doggone funny.
Mike Tooney tells us in his review over at Mystery*File that we shouldn't "try to read this book in one sitting because it just might make you dizzy with laughter." Unfortunately, humor is a subjective thing and I think maybe my sense of humor is far afield from Mike's (and most of the reviewers on Goodreads). Bill Pronzini provides the reader with a run-down of synopses and large snatches of quotations of what, in his opinion, represents some of the worst stories and writing in various subgenres of mystery-everything from hard boiled dicks to Had-I-But-Known damsels in distress and amateur detectives to the boys in blue and everything in between. Gun in Cheek (1982) is a collection of the "best" of the worst in American and British crime fiction.
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