Death and Praise

The more I type up my story, the more I feel for the characters I am planning to kill. I feel almost guilty, mostly because their friends don't know, and are completely oblivious that anything is going to happen. It’s almost as if I’m planning to ruin their lives. I’m finding it very strange (especially through this story) to see how much power I have over my characters, and what I can do to them. I am plotting to give a main character a rather noble death, but it will ruin the others. They have to see it, and they have to lose someone so close to them. It is the perfect ending, but I know that I will have a hard time killing someone I like so much.

Aside from writing: I would like to take a short bit to commend some authors whose work I enjoy so much that I am jealous. I have a knack for finding authors no one I know has ever heard of, and this is the perfect location to push their work. I have two for this update, and then I will allow you to once again go on with whatever it was you were doing before you stumbled across my blog (if you enjoy reading, please at least check out these authors).

John Connolly is a man that writes some of the best pieces of detective work I have come across, and I normally dislike cop novels. In his running series, Charlie Parker is an ex-cop turned private detective, hell bent on figuring out who killed his wife and daughter, and trying to make sure that every other individual gruesomely killed gets the same justice. His best friends are very strange for a cop, an ex-con and a murderer for hire, but how they play off one another is amusing and wonderful. They provide just the right amount of comic relief when the words in the story are becoming just too much. There are several novels in the Charlie Parker series, including a nine full length novels and a novelette in the book of short stories, The Nocturnes, and each is just as amazing as the last.

In addition to the Charlie Parker series, John Connolly has also come out with a couple of books that are geared a little more towards fantasy and science-fiction, both coming from a child’s perspective. In The Book of Lost Things, David has to cope with his mother’s death, his father’s new wife, and a new home in a very short amount of time, almost too short for his liking. He isn’t happy with any of it, until he stumbles through a hole in the garden and finds himself in a land with knights, witches, and other creatures both dark and light. This story has some interesting takes on well-known fables, such as tales by the Brothers Grimm, and is all-over an amazing book.

In The Gates, one of Connolly’s newest novels, Samuel has just happened to notice that his neighbors are up to something strange, and that demons might just be taking over some of them. Oh, and the gates of Hell might just be in danger of opening. No one believes him, as is clear, so he and his dachshund, Boswell, must find a way to save the world from Satan and other demons alone. This is a fun, fast paced story that kept going without break, and had some bits of sarcasm that were perfect.

He also has a book of short stories, The Nocturnes, which has some of the creepiest little stories I have ever had the opportunity to read. It is also how I first fell in love with Charlie Parker, and a novel called Bad Men, which mentions Charlie Parker, but is a novel told from multiple perspectives of a few mysteries surrounding the inhabitants of the small island known as Sanctuary. This was a slower paced book for me, but still more than worth it in the end.

Tana French is another author I have to mention in this, mostly because I am completely in love with her novels. In The Woods is her first published, and it’s won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel (2007). In the story, you meet Rob Ryan, who used to be Adam Ryan as a young boy, before he lost his friends to a mysterious accident in the woods near his house. He was found, clinging to a tree, blood soaking his sneakers, and not a single memory of his accident. Years later, he has become a detective in the Murder squad, and a fairly decent one, paired perfectly with Cassie Maddox, a woman who has recently been transferred into the department. They are both doing fine until a young girl is found dead in the woods where Rob’s friends went missing so many years before. The detective work in the novel is brilliant, and I was kept guessing at who the killer was, and who was even involved. This is definitely amazing.

I am currently in the process of reading her second book, The Likeness, and I am just as in love with it. Cassie Maddox is out of Murder and on to Domestic Violence, a place that is a bit slower paced and more suited to her. Everything is going along smoothly when a girl looking identical to her and using a past identity of hers is found dead in a small town. It is then that Cassie’s world is turned upside down, and she is finding that she has to, once again, don the identity of Lexie Madison to find the girl’s killer. The housemates in this story are beautifully written; I genuinely care for each of them. While there is a chance, I know, that they are guilty, I can’t help but be amused and amazed by everything they do.

Well, that’s my two cents for today. If you can at least pick up one of their books, even if you don’t fully read it, I will know that I have at least accomplished something.

Until next time…

B.K.