Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "mysteries"

I can't do it. I envy those who can.

I will admit that as a playwright, I wrote some things that were funny. But in my novels, nobody's going to laugh out loud.

I note this because I started reading a friend's MS last night and I did...laugh out loud. She has the knack of being funny without being silly, and entertaining without stooping to farce, which irritates me. I was never a fan of the Lucille Ball-type heroine, so overdrawn and asinine that I wanted to slap her. My friend's small-town heroine is sharp-minded and sarcastic, but on the inside, where she keeps up a running commentary on the ironies of American life. Unlikely to buck the system, she recognizes its weaknesses, and the reader gets the benefit of her sardonic observations in just a few words: that feeling of "here we go again" as we deal with personalities and situations we meet today and will see again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I think it's hard to balance murder and comedy, so when I find an author who does it well, I am particularly thrilled. In one of life's odd moments, I met this author at a booksigning of another author (Deb Baker) whose comical Yooper mysteries made me laugh. Deb introduced me to Janet Koch, and we started swapping MSs for editing purposes. The one I'm reading now is due for publication in September, 2010. I'll be sure to remind everyone when that date is closer, because if you like humor in your mysteries, it's a keeper.

E-books are growing in popularity; we all know that. Romances have led the way (as usual), but mysteries are starting to pop up.



I'm finding there aren't many sites for readers of mystery e-books to find out what's out there. My publisher for GO HOME AND DIE, Red Rose Publishing, has just a few mystery listings, and very few reviewers seem to be offering opinions on e-books in this genre.



Wouldn't it be nice, as a reader, to have a list of recommended titles? And it WOULD be nice, as a writer, to have a place to send my work for review and maybe a little publicity.

My "vintage" mystery concerns a prim young woman of the '60s, Carrie, who meets a recently-returned Vietnam vet, Jack. Their first meeting is a bit rocky, but they soon learn to appreciate each other's good points. Carrie admires Jack's courage in facing the problems life has thrown at him. Jack admires Carrie's ability to see the good in the world and help him see it as well.



I chose not to dwell on the politics of the Vietnam war. If you're looking for a commentary on why we were there or how people dealt with PTSD, this is not your book. It's simply a mystery that draws some of its plot from the fact that Jack was in Vietnam.



Of course, the pathway in a mystery is filled with bombs and booby traps. Jack has secrets

that Carrie has to deal with. Carrie has hang-ups that Jack can't understand. Their romance seems unlikely at first, then on, then off, permanently. Despite that, they come to trust each other and depend on each other's strengths.



I like characters with obstacles to overcome. While the mystery part of the story demands careful attention, and while the 1960's setting requires detail to recall and/or recreate for readers, it is the characters we care about. Will they survive? Will they grow? Will they find some sort of peace? And, of course, will they somehow, some way, end up together?



Buy GO HOME AND DIE here: http://redrosepublishing.com/bookstor...

I hope all you mystery readers appreciate the work we writers put into killing people.

For me, a plot has to make sense, be satisfying, and follow logically. I try very hard to avoid TSTL moments (too stupid to live) where a character goes after the killer alone, at night, in a swamp, in high heels or whatever.

I want my readers to have a fair shot at identifying the killer, but I really hope they are surprised, too. In the book I finished reading this morning at breakfast, the clumsy cop who got in the way of the investigation was just a bit too inept for believability, and I knew he was The Guy.

Of course there have to be red herrings (NPI), not too many, though. And when there is a scene where the killer spills his/her guts to the protag, I require a really good reason for them to be spending time together, not just a desire to gloat on the criminal's part.

The denouement, the "unraveling", should be evident by the time we get to it. There should not be long scenes where the sleuth explains motivation or complicated factors. Hints interspersed in the story should come together, so the reader thinks, "I should have seen it coming."

What all this does is make it difficult to write a good mystery. I would never claim that I'm great at all these things, but it is what a mystery writer should strive for: logic and believability, with an ending that wraps everything in a package that makes the reader say, "That's good."

Here are some books I've read recently and my two word reactions.



Fault Line by Barry Eisler---Not Barry

Ten Little Herrings by L.-C. Tyler---Very cute

Death and the Lit Chick by G. M. Malliet----Unexpectedly entertaining

Trunk Music by Michael Connelly----Always quality

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley----Still funny

One gets used to Overspeak in book blurbs. One must. Still, it bothers me, despite lowered expectations, that the term "hilarious" is used to describe the book I'm reading right now. It says on the cover: "This book is hilarious. I laughed till I wet myself." (Okay, I invented that last bit, but you know the sort of over-the-top comment I refer to.)

The book is not hilarious. It isn't even particularly funny. As a matter of fact, I don't think the author MEANT it to be funny. What it is is a run-of-the-mill mystery, the type we read all the time because we read mysteries. And isn't run-of-the-mill okay? Can everything we pick up be the be-all and end-all of modern fiction? Why did some blurber think he had to say the book was hilarious?

I guess for the same reason that all Hollywood actresses are stunning, all stain removers are amazing, and all soldiers are heroic. We've lost the will to describe anything in terms of normalcy. It should be all right to say simply, "It was a good book. I enjoyed reading it." Not that that is likely to happen.

I will admit that I am. If I've somewhere along the line decided I don't like an author or a book, I cannot make myself give him/it another chance. Classics that I should read (THE BROTHERS K, for example) turned me off and I can't get over it. Authors I find preachy, silly, shallow or overly dramatic may have other series, other books than the one I read, but my expectation is that I won't like their work.

Last night I took a copy of a VERY famous author's newest book (given as a freebie at Malice Domestic) and tried to read it. I had read her stuff long ago and disliked it, but it's been years. She's probably gotten better; I've probably gotten over it. Right?

Conditions were right: I had nothing else to read, the evening was long, and I was relaxed. On the first page, I hit a sentence that reminded me of what I didn't like before, and that was it.

There's an opposite to this which shows that some people are better than I am. (Maybe better readers, maybe better people!) Last week a woman admitted to me that someone had recommended my book to her, but she'd been reluctant to read it. "I don't like history," she told me. "I was never interested in the past, and I don't like stories about dead famous people." What, then, makes her a better person than I am? Her final sentence. "But I tried your book and I have to tell you. I couldn't put it down." Now there's an unprejudiced reader (Applause, applause, applause).

I'm getting ready for the Cheboygan Area Library's Artists of the Straits exhibit, starting tomorrow. It's fun to join with other artists, even if my art is different from macrame and acrylics. We share the need/drive/compulsion to express ourselves and the joy/fear/anticipation of presenting our work to the world. Stop in and take a look. We're all in place on Saturday from 11 to 2, and the show is up for the next week, with exhibitors taking turns manning the cashbox.

Here is the list of ebooks featured on mysterebooks.blogspot.com this week:
Monday

Title: L.A. HEAT

Author: P.A. Brown

Genre: Police Procedural w gay characters

Setting: Los Angeles


Tuesday

Title: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY

Author: Stacy Juba

Genre: Mystery/Romantic Suspense

Setting: New England


Wednesday

Title: JOURNEY TO DIE FOR
Author: Radine Trees Nehring

Genre: Mystery/senior citizen detectives

Setting: The story opens on the (real) A&M Railroad historic excursion train operating between towns in Northwest Arkansas, unfolds in the 1809 Arkansas River town of Van Buren, moves to Kansas City, and then back to Van Buren. Though the book refers back to historic events, action time is present day.


Thursday

Title: THRILLED TO DEATH

Author: L.J. Sellers

Genre: mystery / suspense / police procedural

Setting: Eugene, Oregon


Friday

Title: HER HIGHNESS' FIRST MURDER

Author: Peg Herring

Genre: Historical mystery

Setting: Tudor London (1500s)

We could give an infant a bicycle, but it's pretty certain that she will not be able to ride it. We can hand a third grader Shakespeare, and he will in all likelihood fail to appreciate it. Both need time, experience, and maturity to be able to perform the task, no matter how willing they might be. The same is true for authors and publishing. There is a learning curve that must be traveled, and there aren't many shortcuts.
When I started in the business, I read everything I could find: agent advice, author blogs, publishers' recommendations, reader complaints, whatever. The problem is, I couldn't always absorb it. The mind comprehends, but it doesn't internalize until it has experienced some part of what it studies.
There's the vocabulary, which at times scares the newcomer. What is selling through, and why does it matter to me? Later, one understands the words but has yet to experience the process. And of course, the process keeps changing. Add to that that no one really knows WHY books sell. If even the experts don't know, what chance does a beginner have of grasping the rules and making them work for her?
Some love digging into the business end of things, and they probably move along the continuum more rapidly than those who really would rather not think about it. I suppose the latter group is likely to hire help as soon as that is a financial possibility. If help can't be hired, we muddle along, understanding what we have to, moving along the path like snails on a stone.
That third grader may not understand Shakespeare until much later, but he'll grasp what he can along the way.