“The more I describe it, the more vague it gets.” — Shūji Terayama, Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974) I love this quote, but (perhaps appropriately) the more I think about it, the less specific it gets. Essentially, it's about the inadequacy of descriptions or labels. Suppose I ask you what grief feels like.… Continue reading More Information = More Mystery
I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of children's murder mysteries as stepping stones—books that get young readers interested in the genre before they graduate to the "real" mysteries as adults. The Big Bad Wolf Murder reminded me how unfair that way of thinking is. This is simply a well-crafted mystery, regardless of the… Continue reading The Big Bad Wolf Murder
I finished reediting Goodnight Irene. It has been a fascinating process. Aside from sentence structure and formatting, there were two main areas I marked for improvement. The first was strengthening the clues. I mentioned in an earlier post that the clues in GI were timid. This has been rectified -- particularly the basis for the… Continue reading One down
Douglas Ashe's The Longstreet Legacy is delightful for several ancillary reasons. But let’s get the main things out of the way first. Abigail Longstreet is the youngest granddaughter of an old, blind recluse named Ella Maybelle Longstreet. Ella has been behaving strangely these past few months—firing all her staff, leaving raw meat in the fridge,… Continue reading The Longstreet Legacy (aka A Shroud for Grandmama)
I’ve spent many a night huddled in my rocking chair with a murder mystery held steady under the lamp. Why did I keep reading? It might have something to do with the Zeigarnik Effect, which is defined thusly: The tendency for people to remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. In writing, this… Continue reading Bluma Zeigarnik, Ernest Hemingway, and the Murder Mystery
James Scott Byrnside 