Friday morning catch-up...

[alexpgp]

I've been sneaking a page or ten of Sue Grafton's R is for Ricochet at odd moments over the past couple of weeks and find myself now two-thirds of the way through the book, in a strange situation.

Unlike many mystery authors, who try to smack you in the face with some serious action - typically, someone getting killed - within the first couple of pages of a new story, Grafton has woven a tale in which a lot of stuff has been revealed (money laundering, philandering, mind games), but almost nothing has actually happened.

So I'm wondering: Why do I keep turning the pages?

I have some ideas as to why, but if I can definitively answer this question, I think I'll be a lot further along in the writing game.

Cheers...

Comments

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Inelegant. That goes a long way toward explaining something I couldn't quite put my finger on about Grafton's yarns.

In my case, though - and I don't know, it may be my male perspective as a reader - I sort of stopped paying attention to Kinsey and Henry and Rosie quite a number of stories ago, as their interactions seem pretty set (though with perturbations here and there).

I'm starting to think I'm turning the pages because, in effect, Grafton has done a lot of careful setup to arrange a train wreck for the reader to see, and now that I'm sure it's going to happen, I'm sticking around to see how it happens.

It's almost as if watching it actually happen, and finding out what happens in the aftermath aren't important. Yet.

Cheers...

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Grafton does get the procedural details right -- Santa Barbara in the fog, the whole private detective thing etc.

You like mysteries? Have you ever read Ian Rankin's Rebus novels? I wonder if you'd like those?

My personal favorite of that genre is Ruth Rendell whose mysteries are so strange they might have been written by Borges.