Mystery and thrills…
I call all the books in my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco,” “Esther Brookstone Art Detective,” and “Inspector Steve Morgan” series mystery/thriller novels because they’re not exactly novels in the classic sense—readers often learn a bit about the crimes as the stories move along. They’re not exactly thrillers either—there’s not that much heart-pounding and intense action, the literary equivalent of the audiovisual pyrotechnics overload Hollywood pumps out for the addicts who demand that fix. These stories will appeal more to readers who prefer a complex and cerebral spy or crime story, something Hollywood seems incapable of producing these days.
John Le Carre and P. D. James would have a tough time nowadays to achieve the fame they enjoyed in their long careers before streaming video and Hollywood blockbusters ruined readership.
Hollywood has destroyed good stories in many ways. Just compare the Bond movies based on Ian Fleming’s books to the latest entries in the franchise. There’s no comparison! Today’s screenwriters are incompetent hacks compared to Fleming, Le Carre, and James; or maybe it’s just that Hollywood’s producers and directors force them to write schlock now? A cerebral Bond, Smiley, or Dalgliesh (yeah, I count James Bond as cerebral—he has to be going up against smart super-villains like Auric Goldfinger) doesn’t turn modern viewers on, and they have made readers expect the same kind of main character, a two-dimensional cardboard cutout from Hollywood. Those old characters were interesting ones for this reader, though, and I hope my own characters also interest the old traditional readers who expect more than what Hollywood gives.
To be fair, Hollywood has the impossible mission of developing a complex plot or character in a two-hour movie, even though the medium is audiovisual, and they fail miserably trying to do so. A novel can. In fact, it can develop many interesting characters depending on the length of the novel. Moreover, especially if the author is a minimalist writer like I am, a reader can participate in the creative process by using his imagination to complement what the author’s descriptions suggest—try doing that in a damn movie! In the latter, the viewer is constrained by the director and actor’s interpretations of the roles. A reader has no constraints!
Maybe I’m just biased because I was reading exciting novels before I even saw my first movie, High Noon. That was a few years after it came out—my hometown got movies a lot later than big cities! That movie won Gary Cooper an Oscar, much to John Wayne’s chagrin, who’d turned down the role (Coop could act a lot better than John, so no loss there!). The shaded B&W photography (the camera work was designed to mimic Matthew Brady’s photos of the Civil War) added to the mystery and thrills, but I came away remembering forever the complexity of that sheriff’s character. I’ve never seen another film that good in the sense of mystery and thrills.
I want to read books that provide mystery and thrills in complex plots with complex characters. That’s the kind of book I finished as a kid and allowed me to say, “Gee, that was a damn good story.” That’s the kind of book that inspired me to write my own. Christie, Rider Haggard, Asimov—there have been many authors who could create those kind of books. I endeavor to do the same. I wouldn’t miss movies all that much—in fact, I had no problem avoiding them during Covid-19, as the “Movie Reviews” section of this blog proves—but I sure would miss reading a good book. I wouldn’t want to make a movie either, but I want to write books. Storytelling is an addiction, but making a good story isn’t something Hollywood can do well, only authors.
***
Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules listed on my “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, your comment is classified as spam.)
The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. This special 99-cent sale at Smashwords is better than my previous ones! This ebook bundle contains three novels: Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! You start your mind-blowing journey on a future Earth run by international mega-corporations and policed by their mercenaries, but a clever director of the interplanetary space agency refurbishes three long-haul space rigs and uses them to send colonists off to nearby stars. Those colonies become the salvation for humanity as human beings team up with good ETs to battle bad ones…and a collective super-intelligence that’s a bit ambivalent as a villain. But the worst enemy, a human, is yet to come; if this is my Foundation trilogy, he’s my Mule. Spanning thousands of years of future near-Earth history, these adventures in space and time will give you hours of sci-fi mysteries and thrills.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
