The Weatherpixie in the sidebar there, at this moment anyway, is telling me that at Adelaide Airport, 20 minutes south of here, there is currently a totally clear blue sky and the sun is shining brightly with his whole face. Yet chez moi all is dark and gloomy both inside and out. Thunder rumbles roll past in waves. Whistling and pattering, not unlike the whistling and pattering in the Wild Wood in The Wind in the Willows, is coming from outside, and I do so hope it's just the irritating wind and the small rain. It's the sort of day that makes you think you should go straight back to bed and stay there, but if I did that I'd have to finish reading my current bedside book, the new Val McDermid, and that's much much scarier than any scary weather.
My other fear is that the next book in that pile, the new Kathy Reichs (bedtime reading is strictly non-work-related), is going to continue the downward slide that began two or three books in from her debut when her publishers (or so I surmise; maybe her agent too) first told her to dumb down the science, bland out the prose and ramp up the lerve story, which is getting INCREDIBLY TEDIOUS. It's probably too much to think she might have defied them, at this level of success, and write however she damn pleases, the way she did when she first started. But we live in hope.
I'm reading the new Val McD too. I found the TV series with her characters too much to take and have stopped watching it, but still love the books and her wonderful clear crisp prose style.
ReplyDeleteKathy Reichs seems to suddenly slump the endings of her last 3 books, slump is the only word I can use to describe it. I've given up on Patricia Cornwall, Scarpetta's tangled love life has become more important than the science. I would like to see the movie that was hinted at with Angelina Jolie in the lead.
ReplyDeleteI would love a yea or nay on the Val McD before I buy.
Oh, absolutely yea, but then I would always say that about Our Val. WV is 'kingess', if that is any encouragement.
ReplyDeleteI listened to the audio book of the new Kathy Reichs (the abridged version from Audible, they had the unabridged which I vastly perfer to get but for whatever reason only the abridged was available for Australians. And $10 for the audiobook suited me more than $35 for the book ...) It was alright although not exactly too suspenseful, maybe they abridged out a few tasty red herrings. I do like the ones set in Montreal though, such an interesting place.
ReplyDeleteA few Tempe books ago, I blanked out which one, was about the most embarrassingly badly written sex scene in litearure ever, and I can spoil with relief that there is at least no such travesty here.
I met Val once in NZ, many years ago, and she was delightful in person too. Her plotting is just marvellous, and generally her characters ring true. She used my name for a minor character in (I think) Killing the Shadows.
ReplyDeleteNo matter how bad it is, M-H, her daughter is worse. You may recall this thread.
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