Word: crime
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...spend much money on television ads or direct mail specifically aimed at allaying women's concerns. Along with emphasizing the economic recovery, Bush will play on men's fears about Dukakis, painting the Massachusetts Governor as a big-spending liberal who is weak on defense and soft on crime. But any strategy aimed at men could backfire, of course, widening the gap between the sexes that Bush so desperately needs to close...
...life's frustrations for aficionados of the crime novel is the discovery that there are loved ones or esteemed friends who, having sampled the genre, view it with boredom or disdain. The most irritating aspect of the belittlers' criticism is that it is often correct, at least as applied to the humdrum majority among the hundreds of mysteries, thrillers, police procedurals and spy stories published in the U.S. each year. Characters are frequently sketchy, plots more elaborate than coherent, dialogue archly unnatural, and exotic settings tacked on rather than integral to the narrative. Many authors seem to think that...
Probably the hardest kind of crime novel to write is the exploration of the criminal mind from within, the stream of psychotic consciousness brought to its peak in past years by Julian Symons (The Players and the Game) and Ruth Rendell (Live Flesh). That sort of book has been attempted unsuccessfully this season by Robert B. Parker, whose uninsightful Crimson Joy (Delacorte; 211 pages; $16.95) suggests that he would do better to return to slam-bang action. Symons and Rendell, meanwhile, are represented by more conventional fare resurrecting characters from some of their earlier novels...
Hill's novel also features subterranean action, in coal shafts both employed and abandoned. He blends earnest depiction of working-class culture, subtle glimpses of the corrosive effect of crime on victims and perpetrators, a doomed romance between a miner and a police official's college teacher wife, a series of comic set pieces starring the official's bullying superior, and a whole slew of secrets unwisely unearthed. The daring mingling of genres works rather better than the cluttered plot. Most memorable are the scenes of the central character, a wilder version of the bright boy who is the schoolteacher...
...similarities between Bush and Thornburgh will also help the Republicans play up the ideological differences between Bentsen and Dukakis on the Democratic ticket. Bush has spent much of his time criticizing Dukakis as weak on crime. Thornburgh's record as a hard-nosed crime buster when he was governor of Pennsylvania and as the head of the criminal division of the Justice Department will help to show the Democrats as weak on crime...