I am reading "The Black Mask Boys," a collection of short stories which first appeared in Black Mask pulp magazine back in the twenties and thirties. It includes the first ever hard-boiled detective story, "Three Gun Terry" by Carroll John Daly.
So Daly invented the genre. Unfortunately he wasn't a very good writer. Even more unfortunately he never improved (according to the book!) and by the 50s his star had waned.
Even even more unfortunately, another guy's star was on the rise: Mickey Spillane. Now Spillane is not a great writer, but (if the Daly story is indicative) he is better than Daly. Spillane wrote in a letter that Daly was "the master" (!!!) and that he "learnt everything he needed to know from reading him."
Daly even complained that "I'm broke and this guy is getting rich writing my detective." And Spillane was getting rich, his books sold millions of copies, even though literary people didn't like them, the public did. One thing Spillane did introduce was sex, which Daly seems to have avoided at all costs. (The book talks about Daly introducing a female character called "The Flame" who is in love with (or lust for) the detective. It goes on to comment, somewhat humorously that "Hammer would no doubt have stripped and bedded The Flame in Chapter 1, which is agonisingly accurate!)
So Spillane is better then Daly even though Daly inspired him. Can you think of other writers where the inspiration was a poor/bad/terrible writer, and the inspired was better, whether only just or quite a lot?
One final thought: it occured to me that the hard-boiled detective genre has spawned a ton of short stories, novels, radio shows, films, and TV shows, an entire industry worth billions, surely. Imagine inventing an entire genre and then years later after you're dead people saying, "yeah, but they were a terrible writer." Not sure how I fee about that tbh!
by marienbad2