THE GREAT AMERICAN DETECTIVE (1978) ed William Kittredge and Steven M. Krauser
Sunday, 9. April 2006, 12:09:29
This collection of detective stories has two features of interest to the collector of aggressor fiction. Firstly there is the first short story featuring the Executioner written by Don Pendleton, which this is the only printing. Secondly, there is the introduction by Kittredge and Krauser.The short story tells of Bolan picking up the trail of a group of Mafia hitmen and following them to their target, a mobster who turned informant after Bolan spared his life. Bolan uses his war wagon to stop these hitmen and earns the respect of a lot of US Marshals.
A nice story that shows the two sides of Bolan, the ruthless killer and the compassionate man.
The introduction is of great interest. This introduction is the first use of the term "aggressor" to describe these heroes, we see the term appear in several other places most of which cite this introduction and was influential on my own research.
The next point of interest is the fact that Kittredge and Krause show the Aggressor as a progression of the Great American Detective, something many other overviews of crime/detective fiction tend to ignore. So we see the progression from the classical detective (eg Poe's Dupin, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, the original Nick Carter) to the Hard Boiled Detective (Race Williams, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, Mike Hammer) then to the Aggressor (The Executioner, The Butcher, The Penetrator, The Revenger, The Lone Wolf). It looks at how these are all superior men and how they operate outside of the system to protect the system.
A very thought provoking piece indeed.
