Mr. Critical

 By Thomas Kies

I tell my Creative Writing students that once they’ve taken the class, they’ll find themselves being much more critical of the novels that they read.

I know I am.

I recently read Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen.  I absolutely loved it because it’s a complex current satire that’s laugh-out-loud hilarious.  Mr. Hiaasen writes about the rich and the ridiculously rich in Palm Beach, Florida, boa constrictors terrorizing the area’s country clubs, crooks, killers, cops, and a POTUS nicknamed Mastodon by the secret service. 

Needless to say, I enjoyed Squeeze Me very much. 

About a month ago, I finished reading Harlan Coben’s mystery thriller, The Boy from the Woods. The story begins thirty years ago when the police discover a feral boy living alone in the wilds of New Jersey.  The kid grows up and becomes a reluctant investigator looking into the case of a missing high school girl that no one seems to be too concerned about.  The book moves fast and is a cracker jack mystery.  My one complaint was the book never explained how the feral boy came to be in the woods in the first place.

I guess Mr. Coben wanted to leave room for a sequel.

I’m currently reading Brad Parks' newest mystery Interference.  In it, a brilliant physicist is working on the Entanglement Theory of quantum physics.  This is where two particles can be born with intrinsic connection to each other. You can separate the particles across galaxies and the connection remains: poke one and the other feels it. Immediately. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.”

The physicist goes missing and the suspect in a possible kidnapping might be a reclusive billionaire. 

This book moves really fast.  The chapters are short.  I’m loving it.

My only complaint is most of the book is written in the third person.  Except for the physicist's wife who is written in the first person.  I find it distracting. 

Now, I have some criticisms for a couple of authors that I will not name.  One sent me his book to read and I loved it, right up until the end when I found a plot hole large enough you could drive a truck through it.  

One recently sent me a book he’d written asking me to critique it. He’s already got a publisher for the book.  It had been professionally edited so there were few distracting typos and the plot hung together pretty well.  There were about three chapters early on that I thought could have been cut, but the characters were well drawn, and the story held my interest.  I even wrote a blurb for his book cover. 

A few weeks ago, I visited one of my favorite bookstores here in our area and there was a delightful lady signing books that she had written.  I like to support local authors and plunked down the money to purchase her novella.  

I couldn’t finish it.  I couldn’t keep the characters straight, they didn’t seem to act true to the situations they were in, and the plot seemed muddled. 

That being said, I recently read a book by one of the biggest names in the mystery business.  After I finished the book, I felt mildly dissatisfied.  I took a look at some of the professional reviews.  One of them described the author as telling the story without breaking a sweat.

To me that meant that the author had mailed this one in.   But honestly, can anyone really crank out two or three books a year and stay sharp?

Let’s change the subject.

Since we’re in the season of giving thanks.  I’d like to thank my agent, my editors, my publisher, and my readers.  When I go back and reread some of my early work, I shake my head and wonder how I finally managed to write something that anyone would want to read let alone publish.

While I was talking to my publisher a few weeks ago, I told her that she’d changed my life.

She told me that it was me who had changed my life.  

I’ll always be grateful to the people who held my hand along the way, and I especially want to give a huge hug and shout out to my wife, who never let me give up and kept telling me that I was a good writer.

Even when I wasn’t.  Cheers and Happy, albeit belated, Thanksgiving.