Jumping the Shark

Lady Jane Digby, painted by
Joseph Karl Stieler

Today we welcome a guest writer, who calls herself Lady Jane Digby's Ghost. Read a little about her inspiration, 19th-century Lady Jane Digby, here.

Lady Jane Digby's Ghost: I'm a history jock and a voracious reader, which combine to make me a prodigious consumer of European and American mysteries. I don't like cozies, but appreciate that others less hard-boiled than I do. I often consult Wikipedia while reading to get the 411 on people and places referred to in the text. After retiring––honorably––from several careers, I live in Santa Fe where I review books for Amazon, participate in our local adult education group, www.renesan.org, and hang out with my cats. I was born in 1951–you do the math.

I like series books. I really do. I like returning to old friends and accompanying them on their new adventures. And I particularly like mystery series. Give me a new volume in British author Susan Hill's masterful series starring Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler and I'm a happy clam.

But all too many authors have hung on to their once-interesting characters for one or two books too many, and it's the reader who pays the price. Literally "pays the price," as in money spent and time wasted on a book in a series that, once upon a time, was good reading but has degenerated into a mishmash.

When the author loses interest, the reader does, too. But all too often, the author doesn't realize he's lost both the series and the readers until the books stop selling.

So, who's still "got it" and who should hang the characters out to dry? These are my picks, based on years and years and years of reading.

Daniel Silva has been writing his Gabriel Allon books since 2003. They feature an Israeli spy/assassin who wants to leave Israeli intelligence and make his avocation, art restoration, his trade. But, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather III, just when he thinks he's out, they pull him back in. In Silva's case, this happens annually, as a new series book appears every summer, like clockwork.

The books are getting a bit repetitive, but they could be improved by further character development. Give Allon a kid––one who is not killed in a terrorist attack. Let Chiara, Allon's younger Italian wife, age a little, and become a little less gorgeous. Give her a haircut. Finally, kill off Shomron, who seems to be a pain in everyone's side in Israeli intelligence. Silva needs to move forward to keep me reading.

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the "Maisie Dobbs" series. While the series started off well, Ms. Winspear seems to be losing interest in her character and the plots are becoming rote. It's difficult to explain, but Maisie was originally a nuanced creation. She was mentored by Dr. Maurice Blanche, a noted psychologist. After serving in World War I as a nurse in France, she returned to London to set up a detective agency, where she used psychological insight to solve cases. The cases in the succeeding books were well thought out. The past few books seem slapdash, though, without the careful writing Winspear is noted for. She seems to be going through the motions.

Winspear is publishing a new book in April, The Care and Management of Lies: A Novel of the Great War, that does not seem to be part of the Maisie Dobbs series. I think it's time she created another leading character and series. She's a really good writer.

"Charles Todd" is the mother/son writing team who have two World War I series, one featuring Inspector Rutledge, and the other Bess Crawford. Rutledge has been keeping my interest, but the Bess Crawford character seems to be stuck in time. She needs a major shake-up––maybe marrying her father's adjunct, who's been in love with her forever. Maybe as the Great War draws to a close, so should the Bess Crawford character. Or, as the two series are placed in two slightly different times, maybe the final book should be Bess meeting Rutledge. They do seem to have a common friend, Melinda Crawford, who is Bess's cousin and a friend of Rutledge's family, and who appears in both Todd series.

British author David Downing has run out of Berlin train stations with which to title his John Russell series. Masaryk Station, in Prague, was his last book in the series. His main characters, journalist/spy John Russell and actress Effi Koenen, have reached a natural end to the World War II and post-war period, and Downing has gracefully tied up his loose ends in a good final book. He has a new series set in World War I, with the first book, Jack of Spies, published last year. I thought it was a bit overwritten, but otherwise a good start to a new series.


Philip Kerr, with his Bernie Gunther series, keeps his character interesting by not writing the series in timely order. The books are set everywhere from 1930s Berlin, to Cuba in the 1950s, to the Russian front during World War II, and more. The reader never knows where––or when––Bernie will turn up next. That keeps me buying and reading the books. I think that his first three books, now combined in one large volume, Berlin Noir, are his best; some of the best writing about 1930s Berlin available.


Alan Furst will continue writing as long as he wants. He has built up such a following that his books sell well to readers who love everything he puts in front of them. Because he also alternates time and place and characters, his books stay fresh––though look out for his standard scene in a French bar in every book, no matter where otherwise set.

I'm a big fan of British author John Lawton, who writes the Troy series, set in London. Like Philip Kerr, he ranges his books throughout a vast period of time and there are enough characters in the Troy family that the storylines are kept fresh. (Note to American readers who also read British books: Beware when ordering Troy books from the UK. For some odd and unknown reason, Lawton's books sometimes have different titles in the UK and the US. You might see a book on a British seller's site, think you haven't read it, order it, and then be disappointed when it arrives because it is a book you've read, under a different title.)

Many readers have not yet discovered the Billy Boyle series, set in World War II, by author James R. Benn. There are eight titles in the series––like Daniel Silva, Benn publishes a book every summer––and are beginning to get a bit tired. Billy is a former Boston police detective who is a sort of enforcer for his uncle, General Dwight D. Eisenhower.  As befits Billy's background, he "looks into things" for "Uncle Ike" in the European theater.

Benn has improved greatly as a writer, but he's beginning to lose me as a reader due to the repetitious plot lines. Benn also tries to write Billy a love interest, which seems to be spurious at best. He doesn't need one, and her presence drags down the story. (This is a major pet peeve of mine; love interests in books where they're not needed, but are there because the publisher feels they should be, to juice up sales.) Still, every September, I'll look to see if Benn has a new Billy Boyle title. If you haven't heard of James R. Benn, look him up; you might like his wartime mysteries.

There are many other series of mysteries and police procedurals set in England, Canada and the United States that I'd like to cover in future guest posts.

So, what authors and series will you continue to buy and read? And which ones just seem to have petered out, but the author doesn't know it? Let us know.

Review of Suzanne Rindell's The Other Typist

Today we welcome a guest writer, Rich Stoehr, father to three beautiful daughters, avid reader, occasional reviewer, and newly-minted employee of Amazon.com.  Rich is here to review The Other Typist, by Suzanne Rindell, published on May 7 by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam. This is one of the books we suggested a couple of weeks ago as a summer read, and it looks like Rich would happily urge you to carry it with you to your hammock. But before the review, a few words of introduction from Rich.

I'm honest, and I'm rarely afraid to speak my mind. I'm generous with my praise and I try to be constructive in my criticism. And I do love to entertain. Today, I'm happy to be alive, happy to be busy, happy to be doing what I love with people who I love to be around. In an ocean of experience, and in the words of John Green, I'm "grateful to be a little boat, full of water, still floating."



It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The 1920s were a turbulent age for America, which Suzanne Rindell captures very neatly in The Other Typist.

On the surface, it's the story of Rose, a typist for a police station in New York City in 1923. Rose is, by her own description, the essence of plain, never offensive and easy to miss, dedicated to her job and to her moral center. The Other Typist is narrated by Rose herself, in the aftermath of an alluded-to event that only becomes clear near the end of the book. Enter into Rose's plain, ordered world a new typist––bright, brash, and independent Odalie. Though the two women could not be more different, they form a fast friendship.

As Rose and Odalie grow closer, we see the other side of New York in the '20s––the speakeasies and the parties and the new sensibilities. Odalie introduces Rose to the ever-deepening world underneath the rigidly-ordered world Rose has known. And gradually, we see that Rose's tale has an odd element to it––something vague and unsettling that doesn't quite sit right. As she begins to break her own rules, both in her dedication to the truth at the police precinct and in her personal life, the cracks in her narrative subtly reveal themselves.

Rindell's craft is finely-tuned here, and only rarely does she show a little too much of her hand as the story progresses. Rose's narrative voice is both plausible and enticing, hinting at things yet to come and never faltering. "The devil is in the details," Rose remarks at one point, and Rindell takes great care to get the details right here.

The story of Rose and Odalie's friendship is one of dichotomies––not only the difference between a life of rules and a life of independence, but of a nation still struggling to find its identity after a crippling war and in a new century. In Rose's struggle to find herself I saw a much deeper undercurrent of a traditional, conservative identity locking horns with the new and the exciting––tradition in conflict with possibility.

But they're not really so different, are they, Rose and Odalie? They are both products of their age, reflecting different aspects of the same era––opposing sides of the same coin. The best, and the worst of their time.

The question is, which is which? Who, in the end, is "The Other Typist"? Read it, and you just might figure it out for yourself.

Note: A version of this review may appear on Amazon and other reviewing sites under my user names there.

Book Review of Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles

The Song of Achilles
by Madeline Miller

Our guest reviewer today is Judith Starkston, who writes historical fiction and mysteries set in the period of the Trojan War. Judith is currently seeking representation for her manuscript Hand Full of Fire. "In the midst of the mythic Trojan War, Briseis, healing priestess and strong-willed princess, driven by unspeakable grief, raises a sword against Achilles, mightiest of Greek warriors, igniting a passion that seals his fate and changes her destiny."

This review of The Song of Achilles was first posted on Judith's website www.judithstarkston.com. Judith also reviews for Historical Novel Review.

Madeline Miller says the idea for her novel The Song of Achilles arose from wondering about the extremity of grief Achilles suffers when his closest friend Patroclus dies in the ancient Homeric poem the Iliad. What kind of relationship did they have that Achilles loved Patroclus that much? She answers that question with depth and sensitivity. The novel focuses primarily on the theme of the human capacity to love. In Miller's interpretation, the gods, and most especially Thetis, Achilles's mother, don’t understand love, and thus being half-god as Achilles is, sets him up for some complicated trouble in matters of the heart. Told from the point of view of Patroclus, The Song of Achilles is a graceful new exploration of the ancient tale, taking you inside these two heroes in a compelling way.

As in the Iliad, from which Miller has drawn the beginnings of her characters, Achilles loves his friend Patroclus with profound intensity, but in Miller’s take, this love blocks out everyone else in Achilles's view. The half-divine hero seems to have no capacity to love anyone else, not even other friends. Gone are the loyalties and bonds with his fellow warriors that Homer portrays. He doesn’t understand how Patroclus knows and holds in affection many of the men and women they live with and fight for each day, including, interestingly enough, Briseis, the woman over whom Achilles will quarrel with Agamemnon. Achilles notes he doesn't even recognize most of these people. Even as a boy in his father's court in Phthia, Achilles does not connect with the other boys with whom he eats and plays each day. "But in all those years, Achilles showed no interest in any of the boys, though he was polite to them all, as befitted his upbringing. And now he had bestowed the long-awaited honor upon the most unlikely of us, small and ungrateful and probably cursed." And why does he bestow his singular affection on Patroclus? Because, Achilles says, "He is surprising."

No one else finds Patroclus the least bit lovable, at least not until several years into the Trojan War, by which time Patroclus has won many friends through his work in the tent where the wounded are brought and through his kindness to Achilles's women captives. Since he doesn't want sex from the women, nor does Achilles, being kind to them is greatly simplified. One of Miller's conscious choices has been to make the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus entirely exclusive. No captive women appear in the beds of Achilles and Patroclus, as they do in the Iliad.

The novel starts with Patroclus's early childhood. His father is disappointed in him almost from the beginning, and his mother is a simpleton, as far an opposite of Achilles's mother as Miller can portray. When Patroclus accidently kills another boy, his father's biggest disappointment is that he doesn't have the sense to lie about it, and his father doesn't seem overly upset by the need to permanently exile his son. This early emotional deprivation forms Patroclus into a man who will accept Achilles's odd friendship that grows eventually into love—anything to be accepted, especially by someone so extraordinary.

Although Peleus, Achilles's father, shows warm affection and tolerance for his son, Achilles's mother, the goddess Thetis, is clearly the source of the "deficient at love" trait in her son. Miller's Thetis is hard and cold and frightening. Later she will understand that discounting love deprives life, even immortal life, of meaning, but that's much later when it can do no human good. We learn early on that she hates her mortal husband Peleus. Her single ability to love is directed at her son and even that is never intimate or sweetly maternal.

As soon as the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus develops into one of physical love, Thetis appears and makes it clear she despises Patroclus and her son's love for him. At one point Thetis will trap her son into lying with a woman "because of you," Achilles says to Patroclus. Thetis's hatred for Patroclus carries Miller's plot forward in some essential ways and contrasts effectively with the redeeming nature of their relationship, and that may be why she has developed this divine distaste for the love between two men. But it strikes me as an anachronism, and it's an ugly one I'd prefer didn’t leak backwards into time where it didn't exist. Since the main point seems to be, I think, that Thetis doesn't understand love, why play up so strongly her distaste for male love in particular? Greek mythology is full of male unions (Zeus and Ganymede, Heracles and Jason, Poseidon and Pelops, Dionysus and Adonis to name a few) and Thetis's virulent hatred arising directly from the physical relationship seems unnecessary and historically unwarranted. It's true that in the Iliad Thetis reminds her son after Patroclus's death that "It is a good thing to lie with a woman in love." But she also reminds him it's a good thing to eat and drink. She means, it's a good thing to enjoy life while you can and besides, in the Iliad, Achilles often sleeps with women, so her suggestion is not tinged with criticism as the same statement would be in Miller's novel. (If anyone’s interested in a scholarly discussion of this issue in the Mycenaean context, read the first chapter of Eva Cantarella’s Bisexuality in the Ancient World).

The early indication of Patroclus's innate honesty (when he fails to lie about the death he's caused), while a disappointment to his father, is essential to the novel. Patroclus's virtues don't coincide with his father's or Thetis's ideas of heroic attributes—or even his own at first—but he turns out to be the best of the Greeks in Miller's rendering because of his moral sensibilities and his capacity to love. Being best at slaughtering Trojans does not define Miller's Aristos Achaion, "Best of the Greeks," although that is how the phrase is understood among Achilles's fellow warriors. Achilles, for all the intensity of his love for Patroclus, is deficient in these gentler virtues because he cannot connect to anyone but Patroclus. The direness of Achilles's sorrow when Patroclus dies appears to spring from this failing. There can be nothing or no one to replace the hole left by this loss.

Miller has a unique solution, arising from this crippled nature of Achilles in the area of love, to two questions the Iliad asks: why Achilles allows Agamemnon to take Briseis away without a fight and why he chooses to stay out of the fight, even while so many of his fellow Greeks die as a result. Her answers provide a surprising moment. I won't spoil the shock by revealing it, but it will grab you whether the Iliad's an old friend or you've never read it. Suffice to say, Patroclus does not share this crippling, narrowed focus of love, and this lifts him into Miller's new definition of the best hero.

Miller has made a superb offering in the tradition of redefining the Homeric hero. It's an old project dating back to the Iliad itself. Achilles says in Book Nine (here in Lombardo's translation), "It doesn’t matter if you stay in camp or fight—In the end, everybody comes out the same. Coward and hero get the same reward: You die whether you slack off or work. And what do I have for all my suffering?" His comrades on the field beg to differ. They are quite sure fighting for loot and glory is well worth the suffering—the Mycenaean definition of a hero. I am fascinated by Miller's reinterpretation of Achilles and Patroclus and the Homeric tradition. She tells an engaging, emotionally gripping tale.

Miller, who is clearly knowledgeable about Greek history and archaeology, has chosen to float the tale in a mythological world much as the Homeric tradition did, with heroic details of armor and ship, but not much detail of daily life as it occurred in that place and time as we have recently reconstructed it. The Song of Achilles has vivid descriptions. Chiron's cave, for instance: "In front of us was a cave. But to call it that is to demean it, for it was not made of dark stone, but pale rose quartz." This is a magical place, and we enter it, as the two young men do, with wonder and awe. And of course Miller builds Troy for her readers. "Back in the main camp, we stood on the hill that marked the boundary between sand and grass, and regarded the thing we had come for. Troy. It was separated from us by a flat expanse of grass and framed by two wide, lazy rivers. Even so far away, its stone walls caught the sharp sun and gleamed. We fancied we could see the metallic glint of the famous Scaean gate, its brazen hinges said to be tall as a man. Later, I would see those walls up close, their sharp squared stones perfectly cut and fitted against each other, the work of the god Apollo, it was said. And I would wonder at them—at how, ever, the city could be taken." These descriptions paint brilliant images—Miller's especially good at her descriptions of nature—but they are more mythological than archaeological. The Song of Achilles takes the reader on a thoroughly enjoyable voyage into the legendary world of these heroes.

Lenny Kleinfeld: Tinker, Tailor, Novelist, Screenwriter

Photo by Donna Dunlap

A disclaimer: I am not Lenny Kleinfeld's mother, wife or sister.

In fact, I'd never heard of him until writer Leighton Gage was on an Edgar panel and read Shooters & Chasers and raved about it. Leighton said he went so far as to write Lenny to congratulate him. And that's something Leighton hardly ever does.

That was way too much for me. I had to read it. And I agreed with Leighton, who was "blown away," and the Kirkus reviewer, who gave Shooters & Chasers a rare starred review and said, "In Kleinfeld's spellbinding debut, a young Chicago cop chases a pair of killers-for-hire who are also star-crossed lovers. . . .  Appealing heroes and villains, a quirky love story, wit, style, suspense, plus all the authenticity of an Ed McBain procedural. Lose yourself in it."

Read Lenny's guest spot below, and then go get lost.

-- Georgette Spelvin

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Tinker, Tailor, Novelist, Screenwriter

When asked to describe the difference between writing screenplays and writing novels, my standard answer is: "Money and freedom." Despite that statement's comprehensive nature, some people are hung up on the notion that three words is an unsatisfying length for a blog.

Yeah, fine.

Pour yourself a drink. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

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In the 1970s I had a friend in Chicago who owned an art gallery. At a dinner party one night he was happily waving a promotional flyer from a Lower Manhattan gallery. It was touting an artist whose genre was Rectal Realism.

There was a photograph of the genius at work. He wasn't wearing pants. He had a brush stuck in his rectum, and he was painting by wiggling his butt at the canvas.

The RR technique proved easily adaptable to literary endeavors. A stylus is inserted in the rectum and the author squats over a keyboard, typing away.

The ensuing decades have seen a slew of academic studies of literary RR, it being an irresistible thesis topic for PhD candidates in Comp Lit and Abnormal Psych. Those studies have yielded remarkably consistent results:

Rectal Realism works poorly for most novels.

Rectal Realism works perfectly for nine out of ten screenplay assignments.

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Lenny Kleinfeld photo by Donna Dunlap

In general, screenwriting is a younger, taller, handsomer profession than novelizing. Screenwriting also includes health insurance and pensions, bennies entirely unknown to the citizens of Novelistan.

With the exception of the most annoyingly, I mean fabulously, successful novelists, screenwriters make more and steadier money. For instance, a screenwriter gets paid for each draft. A novelist gets spousal patience and loving support for the first few drafts, and after that gets ordered to sleep in the spare room until the damn book is done.

Screenwriters also get paid for rewriting other people's scripts, and for rewriting rewrites of rewrites of rewrites of other people's scripts. That makes up a significant percentage—sometimes the majority—of their income. This is known as the development process.

Some novelists rewrite other people's novels, just barely, then slap a new title on the thing. This is known in French as an "hommage," and in Latin as a "goniff."

Some novelists rewrite their own books, just barely, then slap a new title on it, then repeat the process annually. This is known in geological jargon as "a gold mine."

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Prose does have some procedural advantages.

Novelists are authors.

Screenwriters, 97.46238% of the time, are stenographers, taking dictation from producers, development execs, directors, actors, marketing directors, agents, and sometimes from the personal assistants, spouses and children of all the above.

This is a reflection of financial theology.

In novelizing, the writer is God, sole creator of each little universe, also known as the novel, or, in theological terms, the product. If the product works, the author gets paid and so does everyone else in the publishing congregation.

In the movie business, God is the person who can make thirty-five to a hundred-fifty million dollars appear. So this person is the one who decides what will go in the script.

Since conjuring up so many dollars is an extremely difficult miracle to perform, the usual result is polytheism, wherein many gods and demi-gods cough up a few million apiece.

This entitles all of them to give notes to the screenwriter-stenographer.

It is not unusual for these notes to be contradictory.

It is not unheard of, after a meeting at which these notes are presented, for the screenwriter-stenographer to be collared in the hall by one of the demi-gods, who will whisper instructions to ignore all the notes except his.

No matter which notes the writer chooses to obey, the screenplay will then be rewritten by at least eleven other people, over the course of the next five to ten years.

And yet good scripts do get written and good movies do get made. Sometimes this happens when the script is an original work, made by a director or actor who's powerful enough to protect it; Clint Eastwood is a notorious sinner who regularly blasphemes by making excellent, and profitable, movies based on early drafts of scripts by only one writer.

And sometimes a screenwriter-stenographer-rewriter is accomplished enough to be allowed to function, by one of the 7.6509% producers and studio execs who know their backsides from a trapdoor in the stage and also like good scripts.

Good novels get written because one person is talented and zealous.

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And now for the thrillingly dull technical differences you expected this blog to discuss:

Time functions differently in books and movies. In several significant ways.

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In novels, the reader controls the flow of time. The reader can move quickly or slowly through the prose. Re-read. Skip. Stop to think and/or fantasize.

Stopping allows the reader to keep track of more characters and sub-plots when reading a novel than when watching a film.

Stopping is built into the process; most books, and most readers' lives, are built so that reading a novel in one sitting isn't feasible. Novels are built so that their impact accretes over days and weeks.

A movie audience (assuming the projector and the viewers' bladders are functioning properly), experiences a continuous, unstoppable flow of story.

With recordings of films, the viewer can do the same things a reader does: stop, start, review, skip. This is very useful for studying a film, less useful for enjoying it. Drama is built so its maximum impact is felt when the work is absorbed in one relatively brief, uninterrupted go.

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In prose, time is elastic. On film, time is brutally, ruthlessly brisk.

For instance: On the page, thought is an action. It is as entertaining as any other action in the story.

On film, thought works if it's an actor taking a few seconds to absorb something that has been done or said, and then responding.

Thought that goes on for longer than three seconds tends to be an actor staring out a window for what feels like a century.

I once adapted a novel that had a very smart hero; his thinking was riveting, in the book. In my first draft of the script, which was rigorously faithful to the novel, his thinking meant he stood around squinting meaningfully while the bad guys ran around doing the fun stuff.

In my second draft you knew what the hero was thinking by seeing who he hit/shot/humped/insulted/cared for. Even when it meant inventing scenes that never appeared in the novel.

The producer liked that draft. He gave it to a director. Who decided to polish it himself. His polish consisted of re-inserting the mistakes I'd made in my first draft.

Instead of going back to my functional second draft, the project just got dropped. I never found out why. Gods don't owe answers to stenographers.

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Time also functions differently because novels are a solo act and movies are a team sport.

The novelist has to supply all the descriptions of all the characters, all the locations, all the actions. This takes pages and pages of time. If the prose is well made, the reader enjoys it anyway.

In a movie that stuff is supplied by actors, sets, costumes, props, locations, lighting, camera angles, cutting and sound.

Compared to writing prose, writing for actors (and all those designers) is writing haiku. A paragraph of dialog that's lively in a book is likely to induce scene-killing tedium on screen. You have to reduce that 'graph to a word. Or a wordless glance.

Your job isn't (only) to write elegant lines. Your job is to provide memorable stuff for actors, costumers, cinematographers, stunt drivers, pyro-techs and nude body doubles to do.

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In literary terms, the bottom line is: There are a bazillion fewer words in a screenplay than in a novel.

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In existential terms, the differences are nonexistent.

Novelists and screenwriters spend a great deal of time bitching about the frustrations of their craft and the unfairness of their business.

Novelists and screenwriters remain curiously reluctant to chuck it and go find a real job in the real world.

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© 2011 by Lenny Kleinfeld