195 to 199

The title indicates how many pages long, max, a thriller/suspense/murder mystery book should be. Period. Unless the true author remains true to his or her style and soul. 

I trade books (real ones) with a couple of people who enjoy mainly the same type of reading. It's fun; I've discovered lots of new authors and found myself some new series to investigate and keep reading.

The books are mostly too long, and not because I don't like long books. I love them. But here's what happens: the story is great, moving right along and then boom. Around page 200, it seems the editor hands the book over to a romance novel writer and says: "We can't sell a book this short; read the story and add to it until we have 350-500+ pages so we can ask people to pay $7.99 to $13.99 for a paperback." And they do, and they ruin it. 

Even John Grisham seems to phoney it in these days. I'm currently reading 13 1/2 by Nevada Barr. She had me going great with this psychological suspense story up until, yep, you guessed it—right about page 200. Suddenly I'm reading  overdone descriptions of places and people and schlock like "...on the page in Red's sepulcher" and about hearts pounding bruisingly against ribs.

Huh? I'm a smart girl with a fine grasp of both vocabulary and good writing, and, if I had cared, I would have gone to the dictionary to look up "sepulcher." However, I didn't do that, because I was pissed.

Rule 1: if your writing sends your reader to a dictionary, find another word. A short, easily understandable one so their reading and supposed enjoyment of your book is not interrupted.

I was girl, interrupted, and William F. Buckley is dead.

If the story has interested me until then, I skim the rest to get the gist and climax and resolution. And I mark on my growing list of what I've read that this author is now to be accepted warily into the fold. Three strikes, they're out.

(Okay, just so you don't have to and I am not guilty of the same, "sepulcher" means, essentially, a tomb or resting place for the dead. Can be a noun or a verb, e.g., "If a book bores me or pisses me off, I sepulcher it to the sepulcher of bad writing.")

Life is too short and there are too many books to choose among to read crap you don't like.

And if you like romance novels, great! However, their authors and editors don't cross over well as writer/editors in suspense novels. And if an author is both, beware the "poisonous plant with fast-growing vines" that mixing genres and styles in the same book nourishes...as it kills.