Even from before the time of the Greek tragic playwrights, humans have been fascinated with the workings of eternal justice. How does morality balance the cosmos? When and how are the just rewards delivered to those of an evil ilk?
The works of Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound, The Oresteia), Sophocles (Seven Against Thebes, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra), Euripides (Medea, Electra, Andromache, Herakles, The Trojan Women, Hecuba) and many subsequent playwrights show the intense desire humans hold for eternal justice, probably, because at times, it seems lacking on earth.
The quest to provide justice on earth may have given birth to ancient religions or may be the religions gave birth to this quest, either way, humanity has been on it for ages.
After all, is not the crux of religion, the balancing of earthly wrongs in the hereafter? The rewards of the just, postponed to eternity. In every religion in which heaven is hypothesized, the rewards are for the just, not the corrupt or evil souls.
Human nature and mystery readers in particular are not that patient. In the same manner as the Greek audiences, they cannot delay their gratification that long. Wait an eternity for justice? Are you insane?
Mystery readers are looking for the "bad guys/antagonists" to be found out, and justice to be brought by the protagonist on earth and especially by the last pages of the book. We want that sheet balanced before the epilogue.
When Snidely Whiplash gets what he deserves, the hero has put the world in order. We will even accept a Deus Ex Machina so our hero can serve justice to the evil villain. Whether he serves it with his fists, guns, dynamite or just an arrest, we are happy with the ending.
We feel as if evil is under control. No bad deed goes unpunished. Since we are all good people, the story confirms the existence of immediate earthly Karma, at least on the page of a book.
How simple? How logical? How utopian? How truly unrealistic?
Further along this line of logic, I propose, a writer needs a subject that is morally important to the reader to hold his or her interest throughout his story. Finding Michelle's lost sock may fascinate first graders, but to an adult audience it holds little interest. The loss of life, or money (a robbery) or a change of fortune carries much more weight to a mature reader.
A subject of universal concern, bigger than life is needed for adults to stay reading, and people must be able to relate to that subject personally. Stir that reader's emotions and the interest brews deeply like a Starbuck's pour over.
Write it in first person or third person, but keep that reader close to the action. They want the answer to the question, is there justice in this world? Tell it through Watson or let Holmes speak directly to the reader, your choice, either works.
How will the detective/protagonist (In the well written book, the reader subconsciously substitutes "how will I") bring justice to balance the cosmos? They hope with the protagonist, and they plot against the antagonist. They read on. They fear for the good and wish against the bad. They turn another page.
When justice is received, they put down the book with a satisfied feeling as if they themselves brought about this occurrence, enforcing the eternal balance of the literary cosmos.
This theory elevates the intellectual raison d'etra of mysteries to that of the great Greek Tragedies. Mystery writers are the modern representatives of the ancient tradition.
In a mash-up of the above theories, we may easily assume that the greatest source of ideas for today's creative mystery writer is The Holy Bible, The Ten Commandments, and the seven deadly sins.
For in Western culture what greater repository of morality exists than those precepts. Mystery writers such as Hammett, Chandler and Cain carry on the tradition of the Greek playwrights and bring justice and morality to the masses with antagonists that violate The Ten Commandments on a regular basis.
Today we thank: James Patterson, Robert B. Parker, Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Connelly, Lee Child and their compatriots for sustaining the great legacy.
-- L. Preschel author of the Sam-Cath mystery series.
Showing posts with label Readers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Readers. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Friday, April 29, 2016
For a Reader
My Favorite Mystery Novel of the Second Half of the 20th Century
When I read mysteries, I read as an author as well as for enjoyment. I am always trying to learn how the author created the atmosphere or the red herring or the golden coin in the story. In that way, I am learning the art of mystery writing.
I have read and therefore been taught by many of the best mystery writers of the English language and that includes those translated into English. (If I did not have a lead tongue, and a mind that refuses to learn another language, I might have been tempted to read some of these famous mysteries in their native tongue.)
I learned reading from Michael Connelly, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Lawrence Block, Lee Childs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sue Grafton, J. D. Robb, James Lee Burke, Janet Evanovich, and many others that I cannot remember at the moment.
Pacing, distraction, logic, presentation, and characterization can be learned from reading others's writings. Flaws and mistakes are present even in the works of the greatest authors, and an alert reader can learn from others missteps.
But only one manuscript affected me to the point that I remember it as the best mystery novel written after 1950.
That book is The Poet by Michael Connelly.
Although some less than kind reviewer stated the characterizations were not deep, I believe that reviewer to be too picky.
If this manuscript were an old house with many rooms, the same reviewer would say it was too dusty to appreciate. If you walk through this old house, you would note doors you never saw or noticed from a distance. If you opened these doors, they reveal facts and views that you could not have suspected. After passing through the door, you realize the views could be anticipated prior to venturing in the room. They were not because the architecture hid the clues in the woodwork and the furniture. That made them difficult to see, but the facts were there. While you focused on walking, you missed all that was around you.
Connelly does not surprise you with twists of logic once or twice in The Poet, he flaunts and parades twists, as if his writing were a Twizzlers factory. He even ends the book in this manner.
And that leads to The Narrows, a later novel involving many of the same characters, some of whom were presumed dead.
He also makes the reader sense all the fear of his characters from the safety of our chair. Combining these two accomplishments so flawlessly makes this a masterpiece of a novel. It did win an Anthony and the Dilys award in 1997.
I believe that people read mysteries not just to solve the puzzle. But in The Poet, the puzzle is well conceived and the logic is tight. That helps the reader suspend his disbelief. But the level of evil encountered in this book, is so high, that one reviewer called the villain a comic book evil. However, that reviewer forgot that just prior to the book, it was discovered that the Internet was being used by pedophiles to accomplish their ends. The book transports a mutated reality onto the page. No comic book was ever this evil. No hero was ever this real to the reader.
Readers want to realistically but safely experience true danger and true evil. Thankfully few of us will meet or experience a Hannibal Lecter in our lifetime, or a pedophile like Eidolon, but through the pages of a novel, we can live with these criminal for a short time and quite intimately and still live to tell about it.
In The Poet, Michael Connelly let us live with a murderer who is also a member of a ring of predators and just when you think it is over, it is still on. Wow.
What is your favorite mystery novel and why?
-- L. Preschel author of the Sam-Cath mysteries.
When I read mysteries, I read as an author as well as for enjoyment. I am always trying to learn how the author created the atmosphere or the red herring or the golden coin in the story. In that way, I am learning the art of mystery writing.
I have read and therefore been taught by many of the best mystery writers of the English language and that includes those translated into English. (If I did not have a lead tongue, and a mind that refuses to learn another language, I might have been tempted to read some of these famous mysteries in their native tongue.)
I learned reading from Michael Connelly, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Lawrence Block, Lee Childs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sue Grafton, J. D. Robb, James Lee Burke, Janet Evanovich, and many others that I cannot remember at the moment.
Pacing, distraction, logic, presentation, and characterization can be learned from reading others's writings. Flaws and mistakes are present even in the works of the greatest authors, and an alert reader can learn from others missteps.
But only one manuscript affected me to the point that I remember it as the best mystery novel written after 1950.
That book is The Poet by Michael Connelly.
Although some less than kind reviewer stated the characterizations were not deep, I believe that reviewer to be too picky.
If this manuscript were an old house with many rooms, the same reviewer would say it was too dusty to appreciate. If you walk through this old house, you would note doors you never saw or noticed from a distance. If you opened these doors, they reveal facts and views that you could not have suspected. After passing through the door, you realize the views could be anticipated prior to venturing in the room. They were not because the architecture hid the clues in the woodwork and the furniture. That made them difficult to see, but the facts were there. While you focused on walking, you missed all that was around you.
Connelly does not surprise you with twists of logic once or twice in The Poet, he flaunts and parades twists, as if his writing were a Twizzlers factory. He even ends the book in this manner.
And that leads to The Narrows, a later novel involving many of the same characters, some of whom were presumed dead.
He also makes the reader sense all the fear of his characters from the safety of our chair. Combining these two accomplishments so flawlessly makes this a masterpiece of a novel. It did win an Anthony and the Dilys award in 1997.
I believe that people read mysteries not just to solve the puzzle. But in The Poet, the puzzle is well conceived and the logic is tight. That helps the reader suspend his disbelief. But the level of evil encountered in this book, is so high, that one reviewer called the villain a comic book evil. However, that reviewer forgot that just prior to the book, it was discovered that the Internet was being used by pedophiles to accomplish their ends. The book transports a mutated reality onto the page. No comic book was ever this evil. No hero was ever this real to the reader.
Readers want to realistically but safely experience true danger and true evil. Thankfully few of us will meet or experience a Hannibal Lecter in our lifetime, or a pedophile like Eidolon, but through the pages of a novel, we can live with these criminal for a short time and quite intimately and still live to tell about it.
In The Poet, Michael Connelly let us live with a murderer who is also a member of a ring of predators and just when you think it is over, it is still on. Wow.
What is your favorite mystery novel and why?
-- L. Preschel author of the Sam-Cath mysteries.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Hello and Welcome
Hello and Welcome honored guests.
I am an unpublished writer of murder mysteries. I will be writing about the process and the agonies of creative writing. Specifically communication to an unseen audience in a land possibly far, far away. Communicating across space and time emphasizing clarity of message and invisibility of the author. In person to person communication, the listener's expressions and immediate replies cue us to their understanding of our message or story. The writer enjoys no such feedback. It is only after his words are "written in stone" or more likely on paper that he receives any comments at all.
Because of the permanency of the words on paper, the author cannot react and reiterate his words to make them more accessible to the listener/reader.
Authors communicate in a one and done manner. Therefore, it behooves us to get it right the first time.
Most readers do not think about the process that created the book or e-book manuscript in their hands. The hours of work and re-working of words, paragraphs, ideas and concepts, (editors and first readers to help gain some feedback) and then the final product - which often the writer wishes he could take back the minute he or she sees it published. Once printed, it is on the record and somewhat immutable.
Oscar Wilde when queried about his days work answered. "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."
That is not very far from the truth even for us hack and pulp fiction writers.
I hope through my blog, I will entertain you with stories of the wars to write and publishing without the risk of perishing in the gallant effort.
-- L. Preschel author of the Sam-Cath Murder Mysteries.
I am an unpublished writer of murder mysteries. I will be writing about the process and the agonies of creative writing. Specifically communication to an unseen audience in a land possibly far, far away. Communicating across space and time emphasizing clarity of message and invisibility of the author. In person to person communication, the listener's expressions and immediate replies cue us to their understanding of our message or story. The writer enjoys no such feedback. It is only after his words are "written in stone" or more likely on paper that he receives any comments at all.
Because of the permanency of the words on paper, the author cannot react and reiterate his words to make them more accessible to the listener/reader.
Authors communicate in a one and done manner. Therefore, it behooves us to get it right the first time.
Most readers do not think about the process that created the book or e-book manuscript in their hands. The hours of work and re-working of words, paragraphs, ideas and concepts, (editors and first readers to help gain some feedback) and then the final product - which often the writer wishes he could take back the minute he or she sees it published. Once printed, it is on the record and somewhat immutable.
I hope through my blog, I will entertain you with stories of the wars to write and publishing without the risk of perishing in the gallant effort.
-- L. Preschel author of the Sam-Cath Murder Mysteries.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)