Beard of the Week XXXVI: A Thriller
This week's beard belongs to Michael Robotham, an Australian author of mystery thrillers. I recently read his book Night Ferry and found it quite a satisfying page-turner, one of the select few where I had to stay up reading until 4am to find out what happened. I had read his two previous books, Lost and Suspect (US names) a couple of years ago and I remembered their having the same effect on me (i.e., lots of lost sleep), although I didn't really remember why or what they were about.*
I wouldn't mind figuring out what it is about Robotham's writing and characters and plots I find so exceedingly compelling, but its essence eludes me. Perhaps it's because I get so caught up in reading the stories that I don't have much attention left to observe his technique. And I'm sure he has technique.
"Best sellers", as a category, often irritate me more than they excite me. I'm not sure what the relatively common characteristics of irritating best-sellery are, but I have a few heuristics.
One that tips me off early is an over-abundance of one-sentence paragraphs that serve as something like punch-lines for their predecessor paragraphs, making the writing "punchy", I guess. I can't stand the style.
"Gritty realism" is another best-seller buzz-word that usually doesn't interest me; I look for it in the blurbs so I can avoid it.† "Gritty realism" seems to be used with authors who write scenes of unsavory street life filled with blood, gratuitous violence, and the word "fuck" shouted a great deal, the sort of stuff you just know would be filmed with one of those jerky, hand-held cameras and about about which knowing critics would comment: "Edgy!" I find it tiresome when it's over used.
Then there are the vaguer complaints: characters with as little flavor as most frozen-food entrees, plots that are too predictable or hopelessly unbelievable, and flaccid writing that relies too much on clichés and seems devoid of time spent on editing, probably because the author has to move on and get another book in the pipeline. It's looking like the one characteristic of best-sellers that I can count on is that they seem to pique my cynical curmudgeoneity.
So. There's a bunch of things that don't characterize Robotham's books for me. I suppose it all means that he manages to write in a fast-paced style that doesn't offend my delicate literary sensibilities.
I could tell you a bit of the plot of each but you can easily read those at his site by clicking on the left-hand tabs for each title. They're thrillers, after all, and one can't describe more than the first few pages without giving away some of the fun.
Besides, the plots aren't all that important, I think. Sure, they have to have plots–good ones, in fact–but I don't think one's enjoyment hinges on particulars of the plot so long as there are layers of intrigue, lots of fast-paced action, and at least two instances of mortal peril for the protagonist.
Clearly, too, the main characters are going to be far from normal, run-of-the-mill people, because normal people don't, by definition, encounter strings of extraordinary events in their lives, and certainly not one per chapter. But we expect that, so the author has to create a character who is essentially unbelievable but nevertheless credible. Likewise, we know the plots will be far-fetched, but must not be fetched too far. I award bonus points if the author can do all that without introducing yet another psychopathic serial-killer who keeps voluminous diaries and burns lots of candles in his apartment that is sparsely furnished except for the makeshift shrines to his victims.
All of this seems a roundabout way of saying I quite enjoy reading Robotham's books and I'm not embarrassed to say so or to recommend them to other people who like that sort of thing. Plus, he's cute, and that doesn't hurt. Sometimes I do choose a book based on my reaction to the photograph of the author on the cover. But then, I'm just a shallow, ordinary person who likes to read thrillers.
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* That's not unusual since I have little memory for details about books and movies.
† On the other hand, I almost always go for "quirky" in the blurbs. I adore "quirky".
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on Saturday, 7 June 2008 at 20.05
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Thanks for recommending Michael Robotham and "The Night Ferry." I just finished it this afternoon, having made the mistake of beginning it around 10 o'clock last night. I managed to keep my bargain with myself to put the book down at the end of Part One and go to sleep. I read for an hour or so at the coffee shop this morning. Then, because I had to return other books to the library, and didn't want to have to make another trip to take the Robotham back, I sat there for a couple of hours and finished it. A very satisfying read.
He writes like a journalist, which of course he was. Short sentences. Not many more syllables per sentence than words. And the book is shot through with laugh-out-loud humour, mostly coming from the main character and her sidekick Ruiz. The action is fast-paced, but doesn't seem forced. The story is rivetting, of course, and the characters are all, well, "characters," in another sense of that word.
He uses a technique that is very similar to the book I read before it, Elena Poniatowska's "Tinisima". Both do a very nice job of advancing the plot and the back-story together, moving back and forth, sometimes introducing little snippets of back-story into the action so that you're almost unaware of the technique. It's cleverly done, in both cases. Very different from the standard New Yorker profile article, where every essay begins with the person in the present context, moves predictably to the back story in the second section, and then returns to the present for the bulk of the article.
Robotham likes the cliff-hanger: he brings the present action to a crisis, and the next chapter is back-story. In lots of novels, the back-story is a less-interesting and irritating intrusion; but Robotham's skill is to make both grab and hold the reader's intention.
I'm looking forward to reading his other novels.
But this week I'm reading critical editions of Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Othello, which I'm seeing next week at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.