Authors Electric

I was procrastinating on social media the other day – as you do, or as I do, anyway – and got involved in a conversation where somebody posted the beginning of a book and asked if anyone would be interested in an ARC in the hope of a review on publication. The cover looked a bit home-made (and yes, it really does matter. Rightly or wrongly, people absolutely do judge a book by its cover), but the plot seemed similar to stuff I write – dark and gritty thriller – and so I said I’d give it a go. I like this sort of thing and I'm always interested in how other writers treat the same material. We can all learn from analysing other people's writing. I don’t do this often. Really, I don’t. I’ve been burned too many times by agreeing to read unreadable books, and I don’t like to be in a position where I’m unable to leave a ‘good’ review and feel morally unable not to leave a review at all. You’d think I’d know better by now, wouldn't you? A PDF duly arrives and I swap it for an e...

So I’m reading and ranting again. This one shall remain nameless – and actually I finished it last night and already I can’t remember the title or the author. That’s how memorable the story was. A trad-published book, too, which surprised me. So why am I ranting? Because it’s the second book I’ve read in as many weeks with exactly the same two ‘faults’ – in my opinion, of course. The lack of cause-and-effect and the inappropriate dissolution of tension. Let’s take the first one. Our unlikely and unreliable narrator (this trend is so fashionable right now, it hurts – and unless it’s done really well, it’s largely ineffective …) heroine is caught doing things she shouldn’t. She’s trapped, together with a couple of young girls and the bad guys are pissed-off and about to do Unspeakable Things. But we never know or see these Unspeakable Things, because – guess what? – the chapter ends and suddenly our heroine is free and wakes up in hospital! What? Cause and effect. Rule num...