Crime Fiction Dossier

What makes a good read?

SuperFan Rae Helmsworth posed an interesting question recently on Lee Child's message board:

What are the most important components to you of a good book? Characters? Pace? Plot? Setting? Believability? None of the above? All of the above?

An excellent question and one that I consider often when I'm assessing what I've read. Obviously there are many factors that go into making a book a good read, but I think we can focus on a few of them as being the most important.

The book has to have at least an adequate level of writing -- but you can usually assume that, if the book was published by a reputable publisher. (Occasionally you'll come across something that's abysmally written, but most books are at least competent.)

So beyond that, character is the thing for me. The book has to have a compelling protagonist, someone who makes you care about them and their life, for good or ill. Everything hangs on the characters because if you don't care about the people in the story, you won't want to read it. (It doesn't matter whether you love them or hate them -- you just have to care.)

Plot is probably the second thing -- and that depends a lot on character, too. You take a character, place them in a certain set of circumstances, and see what they do. That's how plot develops, especially when there is conflict involved (and there had better be conflict involved). Character and plot together form the basis for story, so if you can nail those two elements, I'm pretty much sold.

Setting obviously plays a part, but I think it's of lesser importance. When you read a book that uses its setting especially well, it's interesting and adds to the story. But when the setting isn't done quite as well, it generally won't ruin it. There's a lot more leeway here than with character. If plot and character are the meat of the book, setting is the seasoning. You have to really mess up the seasoning in order to make the food inedible.

The same thing goes for elements like pacing, dialogue, etc. They all contribute to the overall quality of the book, but they're secondary. If a book has dialogue that's a little off, or parts that drag, it can still be a good read as long as the story itself is compelling. On the other hand, nobody wants to read even superb dialogue coming out of the mouths of poorly-drawn, one-dimensional characters.

Great writing is nice -- it's always a joy to come across a nicely turned phrase or a particularly evocative description -- but it's not as important as you might think. I'd much rather read a well-told story than a well-written one. (And obviously I'd much rather read one that's both.) It doesn't matter how beautiful the prose is; if it's in service of a lousy story, it won't hold the reader's interest.

(On the other hand, it should be noted, the overall quality of the prose is one of the factors that can elevate a good read to a great one. It would be difficult to have a great book that has only okay writing -- although I can think of some writers who are such good storytellers that they've come close.)

Bottom line, when you're talking about genre fiction, the book has to be entertaining. These are stories we read to be entertained. Genre fiction can educate, illuminate, enlighten, and all the rest, but above all it must entertain. Otherwise, it fails.

Latest Chicago Sun-Times column

My latest column ran this morning in the Chicago Sun-Times. It contains new books from Greg Rucka (Private Wars), Patricia Smiley (Cover Your Assets), Elizabeth Becka (Trace Evidence), Mark Gimenez (The Color of Law) and John Lutz (Fear the Night).

All of them were entertaining and worth reading. Click through for more details.

Is English crime fiction dead?

Sarah Weinman links to an interesting article in the Guardian that considers the current state of crime fiction around the world.

The column was prompted by a recent change by the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) to restrict eligibility for their prestigious Gold Dagger Award to novels originally written in English, a reaction to the fact that three of the past five winners have been translated books.

The author of the piece, noted critic Marcel Berlins, writes:

Is British and American crime writing in decline? Are the two countries that have dominated the genre for more than a century losing it? Are Italians, French, German, Spanish and Nordic authors writing better crime books? (Notice I didn't say Scandinavians, which would have excluded Iceland.)

I've been reviewing crime fiction for more than 20 years, and I do believe that the English (though not Scottish or American) crime fiction scene is in difficulties. It's mainly a problem with age. PD James is in her 80s, Ruth Rendell, 75. Many other first-division writers are in or nudging their 60s. But where are the good young authors to take their place? There are some, of course, but my point is that in the crime fiction field England has lost its supremacy. It is no fluke that so many crime novels by other European writers are occupying shortlists and winners' podiums. The best of them are very good indeed.

In the comments section of Weinman's blog, Mystery Ink's own Fiona Walker makes a great point: if a publisher is willing to buy a "foreign" crime novel and translate it into English, that's a pretty good bet that it's of at least reasonably high quality. Considering that the number of books that fit that criterion is going to be low (How many European crime novels are published in translation each year? Not a huge number.), you're only going to see the best.

It seems a little silly even to talk about U.S. crime fiction being in decline. There is such an unimaginably huge volume of books being published that there is almost literally something for everyone. And with writers like Connelly, Lippman, Ferrigno, Pelecanos, Eisler, TJ Parker, Rozan, etc. plying their trade, the quality of the best is as good as it's ever been, if not better. It's almost like making the claim that "Apples aren't very good anymore...not like they used to be." If you don't like the one you're eating, pick up the next. There are thousands more to choose from.

There might be some truth to the claim that English fiction is a bit moribund at the moment. As a reader, I find it difficult to connect with most of the British books that I try. (I tend to find them cold and anemic.) But that's undoubtedly more a matter of personal taste. I also think the English are being overshadowed to a certain extent by the Scots who are doing quite well at the moment.

Even so, newer English authors like Billingham, Kernick, Hayder, etc. have certainly attracted their share of attention and fans. So if the established masters are getting long in the tooth, there is definitely a crop of younger writers who are stepping up to take their place. Granted, there aren't a huge number of them...But presumably there are more in the UK who haven't made the leap to the States yet.

Overall, I think that crime fiction (American, English, Scottish, Spanish, Scandinavian, whatever) is currently enjoying an extraordinary run of both high quality and popular success that is probably unprecedented. I hope it continues.

Desperately Seeking Books

Once again, I find myself with slots in my column to fill and a lack of pleasing books to fill them with. I don't know if it's fall malaise or what, but so many of the books I've picked up recently just seem so blah. I'll read 30 or 40 or 50 pages of them and they just don't go anywhere. They have familiar plots and flat characters and an overall lack of ganas.

So, please, help me out! If you have a suggestion for a book that's being publishing between (roughly) November 1 and December 15th, please let me know. It would help if the book is by a female author (I'm always looking for more of those), but just about anything is fair game. (Please no vanity press books, though.)

You can email me at: [email protected].

Thanks!

No such thing as bad publicity

Reinforcing the old adage that there's no such thing as bad publicity, Publishers Weekly reports today that St. Martin's is reprinting Scooter Libby's novel:

Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's has had a change of heart about publication plans for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s novel, The Apprentice. Last week, the company said it had no intention of bringing back the title, which it released in paperback in January 2003 (PW Daily, October 31). Prompted by news that the book was now bringing a pretty penny on the Internet, St. Martin's said this morning that it will print 25,000 copies of the trade paperback with plans to ship the book on November 18. It should be available in stores by November 25, according to John Karle, St. Martin's associate director of publicity.

Libby, the former chief-of-staff to Vice President Richard Cheney, is presently under indictment in the Valeria Plame CIA leak inquiry for obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury. The Apprentice is set in 1903 Japan and contains some very imaginative sexual scenarios, written in the same flowery prose made famous by Libby's note to Judith Miller of the New York Times. Though out-of-print until now, it has drawn considerable attention since Libby's indictment, with a copy reportedly being offered for sale by an individual for $2,400 on Amazon.com.

According to PW's review, the book is actually supposed to be pretty good. It's a shame, though, that the only way an author (assuming we can call Libby one) is ever going to get on the front page of the newspaper is to be indicted. Still, a prison term would at least provide the opportunity to do a little hands-on research.

Can you trust book reviews?

Dwight Garner, Salon's book editor, had an excellent piece recently in that publication called "Crisis in Critville: Why you can't trust book reviews." The focus of his piece is on literary critics, but there is some of it that is also applicable to us over here in the genre ghetto.

Garner begins by quoting George Orwell's wonderful essay, "Confessions of a Book Reviewer," a favorite of mine:

In a tart and clear-eyed essay he titled "Confessions of a Book Reviewer," George Orwell once wrote that it is "almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly overpraising the great majority of them." And he added, perhaps unnecessarily: "Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are."

Garner then examines Orwell's thesis and the state of book reviewing today with a series of questions and answers. A couple of his points particularly struck me, so I thought I'd share them, along with my reactions.

Q. If Orwell's thesis about critics "grossly overpraising" books is still true, how can I test it?

A. The next time you bump into a book critic at a party, ask what he or she has read in the past six months that's really blown their hair back, that they've really admired. Chances are they'll be stumped -- at least long enough for you to refill your drink -- even if they've written a heap of glowing reviews during that time...I propose a new rule: Critics may only praise books they're willing to force their friends to read.

This is painfully true, I'm sorry to say. When you review a lot of books, as I do, you too often find yourself writing things that, in retrospect at least, are exaggerated. I don't think it's deliberate. (It's not deliberate on my part, anyway.) But it can be easy to get carried away when you're writing a review, especially if you're doing so on deadline and are pressed for time. Often, I think it's necessary to let a book sit for a while before you can write about it with the requisite dispassion. Unfortunately, that's not always possible.

Garner attributes this overpraise to a pair of factors: literary grade inflation ("Critics read so much gray, mealy, well-intentioned schlock that anyone who is halfway readable...begins to seem like a Writer for the Ages.") and laziness ("It's far easier to write a positive review than a negative one.").

I think that the latter may come in to play infrequently, but the former is really what does it for me. So many of the books I see are so bad that when I find something that is at least reasonably good, I sometimes get carried away. I try to be cognizant of this and ward it off, but it still happens on occasion.

There have been times that I've looked back at reviews I've written and thought to myself, "Did I really write that? About that book?" And there have also been times when I had the opposite reaction, when I realize that I minimized a book that I subsequently realized was better than I gave it credit for. Needless to say, this is an imprecise business.

The good news is that neither of these happens to me very often. I probably am too generous at times with some of the books I write about, but for the most part I think I'm fair and honest in my reactions, and that I justify what I write. That is what I always strive for.

Q. Can I trust book blurbs?

A. Are you kidding? One true story, among many: This writer once reviewed a moderately bad novel titled "No Regrets," by a woman named Fern Kupfer, for a national magazine. (Okay, it was the Village Voice.) I referred to Kupfer's novel, in what I then thought of as a nifty stab, as "the best example yet of what can only be called Vintage Contemporary Lite." (This was in the late '80s, when Vintage Contemporaries were in vogue.) When the paperback came out, I was blurbed thusly: "The best example yet of what can only be called vintage contemporary life." Small "v", small "c", no "Lite." Talk about Orwellian. Ask your local book critic for his or her horror stories.

Here's my story. The book in question was James Patterson's The Big Bad Wolf, which I reviewed for the Chicago Sun-Times. I wrote:

"James Patterson has mastered the art (if you can call it that) of writing mindless, page-turning best sellers that sell millions of copies, then disappear as quickly as last night's fast-food meal."

You can probably see where this one is going. Here is the blurb as it wound up in the paperback edition:

"James Patterson has mastered the art...of writing...page-turning best sellers."

I don't have a copy on-hand, but I'm pretty sure they did leave in the ellipses. (It would be dishonest to omit them.) I think that's the only time that a review of my has edited to the extent that it significantly changed the meaning of what I wrote.

Hyperion did truncate my review of J.A. Konrath's Whiskey Sour, but it wasn't as egregious. Writing for the Sun-Times, I said it was "the best debut of the year so far." It ended up on the cover of the paperback as "the best debut of the year." I didn't really have a problem with that, though, because the book was among my picks for the best debut and was as close to "the best" as any of them.

Q. Do critics try to get blurbed?

A. Only those who are aspiring to be Joel Siegel or, on a somewhat loftier plane, Michiko Kakutani. But here's a game you can play: The next time you're in a bookstore in a major city, preferably New York, scan for the book critics hovering by the "new paperbacks" table. (Critics look just about how you'd expect them to look -- a little pale, a little paunchy, a little ink-stained wretchy.) No, they're not buying books. They get those for free. They're checking to see if their reviews are blurbed on the backs of new arrivals. If they are blurbed, critics worry they're becoming Gene Siskel. If they aren't, critics worry they're not on the map.

The part about the critics huddled near the new releases section of the bookstore searching for their blurbs made me laugh out loud. It's so true! The first thing I do every time I visit a bookstore is make my way for the paperbacks and start scanning the covers.

I get blurbed a lot, so more often than not I find a new one. I'll admit, it's a nice little ego stroke. (Granted, the blurbs never have my name on them. They're always attributed to "Chicago Sun-Times" or "Boston Globe" or whatever. But I know they're me.)

I don't try to write blurbable reviews, but I am conscious of the fact that the kinds of phrases that get blurbed are also likely to be the kinds of things that readers want to know. If a book is a "fast-paced debut" or a "crackling new thriller," that is information readers are looking for.

Phrases like that function as a kind of shorthand, and though they may be a little on the trite side, they're unavoidable. When I'm reviewing 5 books in an 800-word column, I don't have a lot of time to beat around the bush.

I do try to avoid clichés in my reviews whenever possible ("This book will keep you up all night!"), but I also try to write in punchy, active sentences, because that's what my readers are looking for. In the end, that probably makes me more blurbable than some people, but it's by accident, not design.

The thing I always recommend to readers when it comes to book reviews is to spend a little time reading various critics until you find a person (or persons) who writes fairly frequently, seems to be someone you can trust, and has taste that's similar to yours. If you can find someone like that, then their reviews can really be valuable to you. Just blindly picking up a review, though, without knowing anything about the critic isn't nearly as useful.

Oh, and one more thing. If I praise a book in print, you can rest assured that I'm willing to force my friends to read it.

Hmmm...you think maybe that's why nobody will accept my dinner invitations?

Recommended Recent Reads

Some good books I've read recently that didn't make it into my column...

 

Steve Brewer - Bank Job (Intrigue Press, $24)

Another top-notch book from Steve Brewer, the working man's Elmore Leonard. He may only get a fraction of the attention that Dutch does, but his work is just as entertaining. Bank Job is the witty and suspenseful story of three hayseed stick-up men on the lam who take an old bank robber and his wife hostage. When they force the retired crook to perform one last heist, things go more wrong than they ever could have imagined. Combining big laughs with some serious tension and a terrific plot, Bank Job is a real winner.

 

 

 

 

 

Tod Goldberg - Simplify (University of Illinois Press, $14.95)

Short story collections are nearly impossible to review, especially in anything under several hundred words. (How do you comment generally on a book that contains twelve different stories that vary in plot, theme, quality, etc.?) Still, there are a few observations that one can make about Tod Goldberg's Simplify. The stories are sharp and insightful, many of them dealing with issues emerging from childhood. The writing is often funny, even when it's painful, and always to the point, with keen dialogue and a strong voice. Finally, the stories on the whole are powerful, provocative and a pleasure to read. The title entry, in particular, is a minor masterpiece.

 

 

 

Lawrence Block - The Girl With the Long Green Heart (Hard Case Crime, $6.99)

Hard Case Crime continues their tradition of excellence with their latest re-release of a classic noir novel, this time a con man's gem from one of the masters of the medium. Block knows the territory as well as anyone in the genre ever has, and even this early novel (originally published in 1965) demonstrates his already considerable chops. A pair of grifters set up a long con to fleece a New York businessman with a Canadian land scam. They've got the whole thing planned to the smallest detail -- or so they think. Wanna bet things somehow go wrong? This machine-gun paced story shows that, even from the beginning, nobody was better than Block.

 

 

 

Walter Mosley - Cinnamon Kiss (Little, Brown, $24.95)

Easy Rawlins has entered middle age, if not with grace, at least with resilience. He's living in a new world, one beginning to be changed forever by Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, but he's still playing his trade in South Central L.A. the way he always has. When his daughter takes ill, though, and Easy desperately needs money to pay for a cure, the black PI is forced to take a case he doesn't want and to do things he shouldn't do. After ten books in the Rawlins series, Mosley has proven himself to be one the finest writers of detective fiction ever. If in recent years the quality of his plotting has dropped off, the emotional resonance of his storytelling has remained strong. Increasingly over the last few books, there have been times when the author has sacrificed his story in order to make a point, something he never had to do when the series was new. Still, his observations remain sharp, and his depiction of an ordinary black man making his way in a white man's world is as profound and moving as ever.