Bravo (Past and Present)
It’s great to read new books and to discover new authors. But every now and then, it’s nice to return to a classic.
I’m reading John Le Carre’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, circa 1963. I first read this novel when I was about 20. It’s outstanding. It hasn’t aged one bit.
I haven’t read his latest, A DELICATE TRUTH, but I’m thinking about reading that next. If only to make note of the way this master storyteller’s skills have evolved.
So, if you’re a writer: there’s a good exercise. Read a first great novel by someone whose works you admire, then his or her latest novel. Can you find the ways the story structure and character development have changed? Are there lessons to be learned?
Just a thought.
I gotta get back to my book. Can’t wait to see how it ends.
Reviews From the Left Coast
Wowza! Here’s an unexpectedly cool review. It ran today in the Contra Costa Times, the San Jose Mercury News and www.InsideBayArea.com
The writer is Myles Knapp – I swear I didn’t make that up, although I have every intention of stealing it for my Cool Character Names file. And one of the reasons I love this review is that Knapp gets what I wanted to do from the very beginning with Daria Gibron:
Write a typical, iconic “Action Figure” protagonist in the mystery/thriller/noir tradition, with one difference: Make him a her. Every rescue and leap-into-the-fray scene that a writer normally would give to his chisel-chinned hero, I get to give to my ever-so-slightly psychotic heroine.
How fun is that?
Knapp gets it.
