Friday, August 23, 2019
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson: Reviewed by Kristin Amy Whey has the kind of life that looks a little boring from the outside; she’s a wife and mother who hosts...
Beneath the Stains of Time: Terror Tower (1935) by Gerald Verner
Beneath the Stains of Time: Terror Tower (1935) by Gerald Verner: Several months ago, I read two detective novels by the prolific " Gerald Verner ," a penname of John R.S. Pringle, of which the...
FFB Review: THE LAST BEST HOPE (1998) by Ed McBain Reviewed by Barry Ergang
After his all new review
of The
Big Bad City by Ed McBain last week, it seemed appropriate to run again
Barry’s review of THE LAST BEST HOPE. For the full list of reading suggestions,
check out Todd Mason’s Sweet
Freedom blog.
THE LAST BEST HOPE (1998) by Ed
McBain
It's not long thereafter that a man's body is found on a beach in Calusa, the face gone from a shotgun blast. A driver's license and Visa card in the man's pockets suggest he's Jack Lawton. But when Jill is summoned to positively identify the body, she instantly determines from the absence of a miniscule blue dot on his Adam's apple that the man is not her husband.
Matthew puts a firm of private investigators on the case, and on his own phones a precinct in the city where Jack was last known to have been. The city is unnamed; the precinct is the 87th; the detective Matthew talks to is Steve Carella.
Thus McBain melds two series and the sleuths therefrom, each working in different locations on the same case.
As the body count increases and surprises unfold, McBain with the skill his fans know and love conveys the story's past and present from different angles and viewpoints, switching among the various investigators and multiple villains. The reader is taken into the heads of the characters, all of whom are believably fleshed-out, and comes to know them from their conversations with others and their internal monologues—another McBain trademark.
The Last Best Hope never lets up—it's a superb example of a "page-turner"—as characters and events converge in a wild climax tense with excitement but leavened with humor situational, coincidental, and authorial. The lyric from a song in a James Bond movie aptly sums up Ed McBain: "Nobody does it better."
Barry Ergang © 2007, 2019
Some of Derringer
winner Barry Ergang's work is available at Amazon and Smashwords.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Buried Child by Sam Shepard
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Buried Child by Sam Shepard: Reviewed by James Baur Buried Child is a Pulitzer prize winning play written by Sam Shepard that seeks again to ta...
SleuthSayers: Made in the Decade by Robert Lopresti
SleuthSayers: Made in the Decade: by Robert Lopresti Back in January, when I produced my yearly thing I wrote: "I was somewhat surprised to discover that this is ...
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
KRL Update: Only days left to win books from KRL
Only days left to win a copy of "A
Charming Misfortune" by Tonya Kappes and while there check out an
interesting interview with Tonya
And to win a copy of "Spirit
Wind" by Marilyn Meredith
Also to win a copy of the first in a
new series, "And Then There Were Crumbs" by Eve Calder, and while
there check out a fun guest post by Eve about how she came to write a food
mystery
On KRL News only days left to win a
copy of "A Genuine Fix" by J.C. Kenney
And to win a copy of "The Stories
You Tell" by Kristen Lepionka
And to win a copy of "Love and
Death Among the Cheetahs" by Rhys Bowen
And win an ebook copy of "Better
Than Nun" by Alice Loweecey
Happy reading,
Lorie
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Nevermore: Lost Garden, Sensitive Crimes, Heart G...
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Nevermore: Lost Garden, Sensitive Crimes, Heart G...: Reported by Christy In Helen Humphreys’ The Lost Garden , Gwen Davis is put in charge of the farming of potatoes for the war effo...
MAKE MINE MYSTERY: The Killing Thing by Janis Patterson
MAKE MINE MYSTERY: The Killing Thing: by Janis Patterson Perhaps it is the logical outcome of a disordered mind, but after several years of writing mysteri...
Guest Post: Dialogue Attribution in Prose – An Opinion or Two... by Thomas B. Sawyer
Please welcome author
Tom Sawyer back to the blog today.
Dialogue
Attribution in Prose – An Opinion or Two...
By
Thomas B. Sawyer
Coming to narrative fiction
somewhat in reverse from most writers – in that I began as a screenwriter –
afforded me more than a few attitudes. And definitely not least was/is on the
topic of dialogue attribution.
In novels and short stories I
had long been struck by what I see as the rampant, mindless use of “he said,”
“she said,” “said he” and the like. I know that many highly regarded and/or
successful writers and teachers believe such usage as a kind of pinnacle of
simplicity. I agree, but not in the affirmative sense of “simple.”
As I began to contemplate my
first venture into the form, I started to question such things more actively. Why,
I wondered, would experienced, quality writers who otherwise (rightly) bust
their humps to avoid repetitions and the use of clichés, surrender to these
without guilt? Or, viewed another way, when does a particular phrase cease
being “economical,” and morph into a mindless cliché?
And how many millions of trees,
I asked myself, have given their lives for such conceits?
To me, even worse – no, make
that dumber – is “she/he asked.” It’s dumber because, since it so often follows
a question mark, the reader knows it’s a question, right? So why repeat
it?
And then there are “he blurted,”
“she exclaimed,” “he queried,” etc. If you must attribute, rather than
committing those atrocities, I guess “he said” begins to look attractive.
Almost.
Did I have a solution? Yeah.
When I prepared to write my first novel, THE SIXTEENTH MAN, I set as a
goal/challenge for myself – a little secret bar-raising pact, if you will –
that I would never use any of those
phrases. Ever. And I never have.
The result? While hardly
revolutionary – I’ve since learned that numerous novelists do it – I’m
convinced that it has made my writing better, more readable, and certainly more visual.
Here’s my approach, and the way
I teach it.
Work on attribution the way you
work on the rest of your writing, with the care you give to your dialogue and
your descriptions. Will it make a dramatic difference to your readers? Not
likely. Will they even be aware of it? Probably not. But – will it make
a difference to you as a writer? Emphatically, yes. It’ll force you to think.
To challenge yourself about stuff from which most narrative writers take the
day off. So that all of your writing will become fresher. And
importantly, more visual about stuff that really
matters: your story’s drama.
And for me, in the process, I
found that it contributed to finding my “voice.”
It also contributed to some
criticism from certain literary types who warned me that as a novelist I could
not “write for the camera.” I submit that they are mistaken. The reader is the camera. The reader is seeing the pictures. Imagining
the scene.
Think about conventional,
by-the-numbers dialogue attribution for a moment. “She said,” does almost
nothing to help the reader envision
the scene. It says nothing about the body-language of the speaker, or her
inflection. Where were her hands? Was her head cocked to one side? Did she,
during the speech, touch her face, or the person to whom she spoke? For me,
settling for “said” implies that the speaker is delivering lines with arms
hanging at his/her side. Again, for me as a reader, a brief description of
body-language counts for a helluvva lot more than knowing what the person is
wearing, or hair-color, or the texture of sofa-upholstery.
Or merely, identifying the
character who is speaking.
Admittedly, noting such detail
isn’t always important, but when it helps the reader “see” the action, it seems
to follow that it will also help the reader “hear” the words.
In my own case, as with
most-but-not-all writers, when it’s obviously clear for the reader which
character is speaking, I omit attribution. But when the speaker is gesturing to
emphasize a point, or is revealing, say, insecurity or anger or even an emotion
that contradicts his or her words, that is worth communicating to my
audience. Further, when a character’s response to another’s words isn’t
spoken, but is rather a gesture, or a look, that can be good
storytelling. And effective theater.
I think of it as directing my
actors – just as in my scriptwriting, describing when necessary
those actions that augment their speeches – or – as in non-verbal
responses – replace them entirely.
I urge any writer to try it. I
think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Tom Sawyer ©2019
Edgar & Emmy-nominated, Tom Sawyer was Head Writer/Showrunner of the classic CBS series, MURDER, SHE WROTE, for which he wrote 24 episodes. Tom sold, then wrote 9 series pilots, was Head Writer/Showrunner or Producer on 15 network series. Tom wrote/directed/produced the feature-film comedy, ALICE GOODBODY. He is co-librettist/lyricist ofJACK, an opera about JFK which has been performed to acclaim in the US and Europe. Tom authored bestselling mystery/thrillers THE SIXTEENTH MAN, & NO PLACE TO RUN. His latest, a mystery/thriller-with-humor: A MAJORPRODUCTION!, 2nd in a series featuring NY PI Barney Moon, who doesn’t drive, sees LA as an Alien Planet, and is stuckthere. www.thomasbsawyer.com
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Beneath the Stains of Time: The Case of the Hanging Rope (1937) by Christopher...
Beneath the Stains of Time: The Case of the Hanging Rope (1937) by Christopher...: Christopher Bush 's The Case of the Hanging Rope (1937) is the seventeenth detective novel in the Ludovic Travers and Superintendent...
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