Dobyns Reaches His Finish Line

Stephen Dobyns, the New Jersey-born poet, ex-reporter and former English professor, and crime fictionist, died on June 14 at age 85. Among his many books were 11 novels starring Charlie Bradshaw, described by The Thrilling Detective Web Site as a onetime cop and “small-town private eye in Saratoga Springs, New York.” The first entry in that series was Saratoga Longshot, which reached print in 1976. The final Bradshaw yarn appeared in 2017 under the title Saratoga Payback. He also penned standalone works of crime fiction, such as Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? (2015) and The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini (1988).

In a Facebook post this week, editor, critic, and occasional Rap Sheet contributor Jim Thomsen explained that he’d been in the midst of composing an article for Substack about Dobyn’s 1987 noir yarn, A Boat Off the Coast, when he learned of the author’s demise. At the conclusion of that article, he notes:

I’m a big admirer of Stephen Dobyns, though I’m guessing he’s neither the first or even hundred and first name you might think of when you think of a “noir author,” nor was he the type to habituate the hotel bar at a Bouchercon-type conclave and thus gain the slavish admiration of the social-media class.

First, because he’s primarily thought of as a poet (fourteen published volumes of verse since 1972). Second, because his fiction worked in many idioms. His first published novel, A Man of Little Evils (1973), was a John le Carré-like spy novel set in England. And soon after he wrote the first of eleven non-noirish private-detective novels set in Saratoga Springs, New York, and starring the hangdog, sad-sack Charlie Bradshaw. The rest of his novels, while all having elements of crime, defy easy categorization beyond “literary,” and his latter-day efforts had something of a madcap comic bent, as witnessed by his last, Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?

Some of his crime novels are noir-inflected, but only A Boat Off the Coast has the bullet that hits the noir bone.

According to an online obituary, “a memorial service will be held in September” in Connecticut, where Dobyns passed away.