I am a big fan of old pulp heroes, like The Saint, Doc Savage, The Shadow etc. I have read just about every tale of those and many others, and when a new author takes to pen to create new adventures featuring my old friends I usually give them a chance…and it usually doesn’t turn out half bad.
Then there is James Patterson. He has started to write stories involving my old friends (The Shadow and Doc Savage, with another Shadow novel coming soon) and, because the man cannot write period stories to save his life, he has used various methods to shoehorn them into the 21st century.
And they suck the very life force out of the both the characters and my memories. They are barely outlines of a story at best, dry and lifeless, and he has them speaking in first person which sort of ruins the whole “Man Of Mystery” effect in my opinion.
I like the approach Paul Malmont took in The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril. Instead of writing a pulp story about the Shadow and Doc Savage, he wrote a pulp story with Walter Gibson and Lester Dent as the heroes. He’s also penned a few Doc Savage comics.
Please tell me his method of shoehorning the characters into the 21st century involve either falling into time portals or “This is actually The Shadow Jr. Jr. Jr. but we just call him The Shadow for simplicities sake”
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are lots of long running series that are always set in the present day with the hero never getting older even after decades.
Probably better to have the original Shadow still alive than Son of The Shadow, or The Shadow fell through a time warp.
Yeah, he is the Thomas Kincaid of writers, isn’t he? He sits down and discusses stories with other authors, who then go and actually write the books. He possibly gives them a look over and they are published with his name and their name on them(his usually much bigger).
Does James Patterson do any solo authoring at this point? I don’t know if I’ve seen a comprehensive list of books he solo authored in his career, but I presume he began on his own and at some point, he became a “label” of sorts.
I’m definitely aware. Actually, do they still put out Kinkade paintings? I could see Patterson novels still coming long after he dies.
Was Kinkade’s drinking death related to his…well, kind of failure in the art world? Financially successful, but not well regarded in the art world? Or do we have no idea?
So don’t read them. That’s the simple solution to your problem.
For me, it would be similar to if some clown tried to write new Horatio Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin novels. Once I’d got over the urge to go burn the fool alive, I’d just decide not to ever read the novels, and call it a day.
