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katherine_b at 02:13pm on 05/02/2005
katherine_b at 02:13pm on 05/02/2005It was my mother's birthday on Tuesday and my Dad bought an illustrated copy of "The Da Vinci Code", which none of us had read before. (Dad plans to read it to Mum, although I tend to think she will get too confused - she can no longer read nor really concentrate so well.) There were a number of points that are relevant to my own writing as well as showing me some things I really don't like in other people's work.
My personal dislike in murder mysteries is when the reader knows who the killer is from the word 'go'. I always feel as if I am waiting for the detective and other characters to catch up with my knowledge and it makes them look pretty stupid, which clearly none of the main characters in "The Da Vinci Code" are meant to be. I personally prefer to find out along with the detective whodunnit, or even after them, when I can read back through the book wondering: "Wow, how did they figure that one out?" "The Da Vinci Code" being what it is, I have no desire to reread it.
I'm not sure whether it's me being a writer and so thinking 'if this were me, where would I take the plot from here?', but I knew from about half-way through the book who was behind the mystery and who 'Teacher' would have to be. I don't expect that to be so well-hidden that I can never work out how the detective realised it (as I've seen on a number of occasions), but I do prefer a bit more of a challenge.
I also prefer characters to remain the same throughout. The detective swung from one end of the personality scale to the other and back again - from nice to nasty and back to nice again. While I can see that it was necessary for the plot, a little consistency would be good.
Reading this has made me realise one thing that also bothered me about Lesley's "Real CS", and that is predictability. *waits for gasps of horror and protestations to die down* I mean it. Not that it's possible to tell the details of what will happen, but it's obvious that something will, and that even if it begins by being positive, it will have twisted around to being negative in the end. Perhaps this is also the reason I knew who 'Teacher' would be. Honestly, Dan Brown could have made this less predictable if he had let our hero and heroine meet one person who actually did help them instead of trying to turn them in or turn against them.
The other problem is, as I have been told in "Peace", showing off the author's knowledge. The moments of hectic activity were interspersed with history, and while some of it was necessary to the storyline, a lot of it seemed to just be Brown wanting to show everything he had uncovered about the Priory of Sion or Da Vinci's work, or even his own suppositions about the Church. A little less of that, a few more people acting in a positive way and the book would have gone from very good murder mystery to excellent text.
Overall, I'd give it about a B-/C+ I think.
My personal dislike in murder mysteries is when the reader knows who the killer is from the word 'go'. I always feel as if I am waiting for the detective and other characters to catch up with my knowledge and it makes them look pretty stupid, which clearly none of the main characters in "The Da Vinci Code" are meant to be. I personally prefer to find out along with the detective whodunnit, or even after them, when I can read back through the book wondering: "Wow, how did they figure that one out?" "The Da Vinci Code" being what it is, I have no desire to reread it.
I'm not sure whether it's me being a writer and so thinking 'if this were me, where would I take the plot from here?', but I knew from about half-way through the book who was behind the mystery and who 'Teacher' would have to be. I don't expect that to be so well-hidden that I can never work out how the detective realised it (as I've seen on a number of occasions), but I do prefer a bit more of a challenge.
I also prefer characters to remain the same throughout. The detective swung from one end of the personality scale to the other and back again - from nice to nasty and back to nice again. While I can see that it was necessary for the plot, a little consistency would be good.
Reading this has made me realise one thing that also bothered me about Lesley's "Real CS", and that is predictability. *waits for gasps of horror and protestations to die down* I mean it. Not that it's possible to tell the details of what will happen, but it's obvious that something will, and that even if it begins by being positive, it will have twisted around to being negative in the end. Perhaps this is also the reason I knew who 'Teacher' would be. Honestly, Dan Brown could have made this less predictable if he had let our hero and heroine meet one person who actually did help them instead of trying to turn them in or turn against them.
The other problem is, as I have been told in "Peace", showing off the author's knowledge. The moments of hectic activity were interspersed with history, and while some of it was necessary to the storyline, a lot of it seemed to just be Brown wanting to show everything he had uncovered about the Priory of Sion or Da Vinci's work, or even his own suppositions about the Church. A little less of that, a few more people acting in a positive way and the book would have gone from very good murder mystery to excellent text.
Overall, I'd give it about a B-/C+ I think.
accomplished