Literary poaching

Literary poaching

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Literary poaching

When a writer first puts pen to paper, he or she is often unclear about how to carry on for hundreds of pages until the pen (typewriter, computer) is put aside. Some head off in one direction, then change course. More than a few go in circles, hoping to stumble on a plot, a unique niche.

Beastly Things by Donna Leon 357pp 2013 Arrow paperback Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops 350 baht

The problem is that established writers have found their niche and there is no credit for being a copycat. Yet similar isn't identical, the similarity being just that little bit different. Whether Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade are interchangeable is a moot question.

Still, poaching now and then is permissible with a wink and a nod. Readers smile when they take note of it. 'No Trespassing' warnings don't include bear traps and shotguns. The boundaries are known. To be sure, when the reading public likes a character, a venue, a theme, writers not identified with one or more will give it to them.

Robin Cook, a Boston-writer/MD, long since cornered the literary market in which his novels warn about contemporary nefarious medical practices. To hear him tell it, it's even dangerous to check into hospitals, where surgeons are itching to steal your vital organs and sell them for vast amounts of money.

Another of his warnings is that animals sent to be butchered for your consumption may well be diseased when slaughtered. No guarantee that you'll survive the repast. These and other medical warnings are clearly Cook's field, his niche, his specialty.

In Beastly Things Donna Leon made it the plot of her recent crime novel, set like the 25 previous in Venice, Italy. Her literary creation Commissary Guido Brunetti is yet again called on to solve a murder.

Despite the inefficiency of his country's civil service, he ultimately gets his hands on needed documents.

Following Cook's lead, though Leon is on a par as a writer, the body is identified as the slaughterhouse veterinarian. Exhaustive albeit not boring interviews with all and sundry there, he gets his man _ woman, rather. We are given insights into Italian marriage and infidelity.

Those expecting the Mafia to raise their ugly head will be disappointed. Nothing about Il Duce or the Legions of yore. Brunetti has a staff, but is by and large a one-man show. No police brutality. He asks the same question over and over until he gets the right answer he knew was there.

A Robin Cook novel on the canals.

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga 380pp 2013 Corgi paperback Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops 350 baht

Thumbs down

When opening a crime novel, this reviewer doesn't do so with the intention of raising the sleuth to the solution of the mystery. As I know that few things are what they seem at the outset, that red herrings are dragged before me, that twists and turns are coming. I sit back to enjoy the story and how it's told.

How it is told makes the difference between an interesting and a dull story. It's about ability _ writers able to write compelling page-turners and others who drone on.

The story may not be drivel, but the delivery leaves much to be desired. The mind wanders. What did the character just say or do?

Which describes my feelings about I Hunt Killers by Yank author Barry Lyga. The blurb informs us that he's written earlier books, so he may have fans. But I don't attribute my thumbs down to getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

It is set in Lobo's Nod where even the coyotes migrate from. Women are being murdered there and Billy Dent, who allows that he's taken more than one life in his time, is tapped. Awaiting execution, he protests his innocence.

Sheriff G William has heard them all and could care less, but Billy's son isn't so sure. Jasper "Jazz" Dent is a lawman, who means to get it right.

Dozens of pages are spent discussing life and death, pseudo-intellectual observations done better in numerous other books.

In the event, Billy is able to profile the serial killer, who has taken to calling himself The Impressionist. We are asked to believe that, along with a few clues, Jazz is able to track him down.

I suggest that a course in creative writing would be a boom for Lyga. If he has the innate ability to make a story interesting, it will be brought out there.

As for serial killers, they are more than villains in detective stories. They are American, British, French, Russian monsters captured and tried and have been given extensive media coverage, medical tests and psychiatric evaluations and are the subjects of a good many books.

The Impressionist is two-dimensional. To say that he blended in with the community is simplistic.

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