Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plot is a gimmick in two brisk acts. In the first we meet six characters in search of a murder: Tony, a flamboyantly gay barber; Barbara, a tough-doll beautician; Eddie, a shady dealer in antiques; the patrician Mrs. Shubert; and two other salon customers who are soon revealed as detectives. They're staking out the building's upstairs tenant, Isabel Czerny, a reclusive concert pianist. Sure enough, the unseen Isabel is murdered. O.K.-whodunit...
This much and a good deal more is brilliant. Too bad such books need a plot, because mood and murk are what they're about. But they do, and what Noon comes up with, no surprise, is a Quest. Worked with Orpheus and Eurydice-why not? Scribble tries to retrieve his incestuously beloved kid sister Desdemona from one of those alternate worlds, with scenic but otherwise dim results. Vurt is a good try at great nonsense, and if someone doesn't use it as the basis for Son of Blade Runner, Hollywood isn't paying attention...
...insists he will pursue psychological counseling even if the university does not require it. But above all, he wants to be a writer-the kind who gets noticed. "The worst insult to a writer is for people to have no opinion about his work,'' he says. His newest plot line: "a guy who has been wronged by society and is out for revenge." By the time this case is sorted out, he should have plenty of material...
...detective inspectors, Kate Miskin and Daniel Aaron. Her detectives often become emotionally involved in the cases they investigate. In Original Sin, it is Daniel Aaron, more than Dalgleish, who is drawn in. Although Aaron is not as satisfyingly developed as his superior has been in previous novels, the plot is strong enough to carry him along, and the reader will experience only the slightest regret that Dalgleish is not more in evidence...
...plot with great care, and it takes as long as the actual writing, she says." The writing, when it finally happens, often takes place at her kitchen table, before breakfast. This is a throwback to the days when the author worked in administration, and had to schedule her writing around a full day's work. What is her writing process like...