| Revision as of 05:59, 21 March 2010 editCelique (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users1,516 editsm Typo: corrected Bernadino to Bernardino← Previous edit | Latest revision as of 04:14, 3 July 2020 edit undoTAnthony (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, File movers, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers, Template editors857,848 edits Rcat | ||
| (6 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| #REDIRECT] | |||
| {{Unreferenced|date=December 2009}} | |||
| '''Sheriff Joe Bain''' is the protagonist of a short series, prematurely abandoned, of crime-investigation mysteries by the American author ], better known for his ] novels. The series as published comprises ''The Fox Valley Murders'' (1966) and ''The Pleasant Grove Murders'' (1967). An unfinished third novel exists. The milieu for the books is San Rodrigo County, a fictitious precinct in rural ], the state Vance has lived in for most of his life. | |||
| {{R from fictional character|20th century literary}} | |||
| ==Style and characters== | |||
| Though the murder mystery in each novel is plotted with Vance’s customary ingenuity, the real pleasure in these books is the spare, unembellished style (compared to the Baroque prose of his SF fantasies, Vance’s earth-bound thrillers cultivate a deadpan narrative idiom), the light touch of Vance's habitually pervasive ], the minute and affectionate observation of rural and small-town California, and the interaction of a rich gallery of characters. The central character is the policeman Joe Bain, who must run for ] to succeed his corrupt and lackadaisical boss, Sheriff "Cooch" Cuchinello throughout ''The Fox River Murders'' and keep an eye toward his reelection in the subsequent | |||
| novel(s). Bain's wife ran off shortly after the birth of their daughter Miranda, who's in high school at the time of these novels, and who he's raised with the help of his mother Miriam. Typically for a Vance protagonist he is good at his job, sparing of speech, generally amiable and not very impressible. He's a graduate of the ] of ] in North Hollywood and often puts what he learned there to good use. He is surrounded by characters more flamboyant, ambitious, egotistical and (in their own estimation) much cleverer than he. Though the narrative approach is generally ‘realistic’, lacking the fantastic invention of Vance’s SF, he occasionally teases the boundaries of the ‘detective novel’ genre, as with the character of Luna with whom Bain has a mild flirtation in ''The Pleasant Grove Murders'': a ] real estate agent who claims to be really a visitor from the planet Arthemisia, with which she communicates by means of a number of bowls of water filled to various levels. | |||
| ==San Rodrigo County== | |||
| As in many Vance novels, the milieu virtually has character status. He has said that San Rodrigo county is a blend of elements of several actual Californian counties, and there are general resemblances to the ] region in which Vance spent most of his childhood. Moreover the county is given cartographical reality by several maps which appear in the books, from a general view of San Rodrigo County within its borders to street-plans of some of its townships. The chief of these include San Rodrigo, Pleasant Grove, Aurora and Marblestone; the high ground is generally on the west of the county; the principal waterway is Genesee Creek, which debouches into Genesee Slough in the north-east quarter. Roads leave the county boundaries in the direction of real places -- ], ], ], ] -- and we are informed that from the western border it is only 13 miles to the ]. All of this circumstantial evidence places Joe Bain’s precinct rather precisely on the western edge of the central San Joaquin Valley. | |||
| ==The Third Novel== | |||
| Vance seems to have planned an extended series of Joe Bain novels, and was fairly well advanced on a third one before he decided to pack it in. Photocopies of a typescript draft of ''The Genesee Slough Murders'' have circulated among collectors over the years. The draft is fascinating evidence of Vance's working practices. The entire story, including the solution of the crime, is extant in outline, and some early chapters are fairly fully drafted, though obviously lacking a final polish. A version of the draft was published in ''The Work of Jack Vance. An Annotated Bibliography & Guide'' by Jerry Hewett and Daryl F. Mallett, edited by Boden Clarke (San Bernardino, California, 1994). | |||
| {{DEFAULTSORT:Bain, Sheriff Joe}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:Bain, Sheriff Joe}} | ||
| ] | ] | ||
Latest revision as of 04:14, 3 July 2020
Redirect to:
- From a fictional character: This is a redirect from a fictional character to a related fictional work or list of characters. The destination may be an article about a related fictional work that mentions this character, a standalone list of characters, or a subsection of an article or list.
- For redirects named for fictional places use {{R from fictional location}}, and for those named for fictional elements (objects or concepts), use {{R from fictional element}}.