Bernard Cornwell's new mystery, Gallows Thief, is an enjoyable read. That isn't something I can say about most mysteries. I know mysteries often have murders, but I really don't enjoy them on the whole. This one was just a great book. I loved the snipets of lower class London, contrasted with the upper echelons. Rider Snadman is an engaging character. He is a top-notch cricket player, who was like Shoeless Joe Jackson of his sport. He quit his team after he found out the flubbed a game. This shows his very strong moral backbone. It also allows him into places he wouldn't otherwise be admitted because of his mild celebrity status. He is also an ex-Army Captain from a foot division who served at Waterloo. He brings a realism to that battle. It holds with historical fact, and shows how incredibly brave Rider is, while not showing the war with rosey coloured glasses. Rider also has station, but no money as his father racked up many debts, which Rider is determined to pay to save his family name. He is also in love with a girl who's father thinks Rider is beneath. Rider is a completly believable, complex character. That was one of the things that really drew me into the book.
Rider is sent to find out the truth of a murder that a young painter is going to hang for. Of course, an aristocrat actually did it and tried to pin it on him. There is a men's club that further muddys the problem. This normal obfuscation of the truth to make the book interesting, actually worked in this book. Most murder mysteries seem very contrived on this point. Rider does a very good job on this point, even though he is not qualified as an investigator at all. That fact adds another dimension to the equation. The government just wanted to verdict confirmed to appease the Queen, but Rider is a man who has to do any job right. The ending is of course a nail-biter, but doen't seem overly contrived. I liked the postscript. He will gain his money from a venture to sell cigarettes from Spain. This rings truer for me than some contrived thing with the case would have. I could see a sequel for this book.
I'm also listening to Anne Rice's Blackwood Farm on tape. Normally I hate the abridged version, but my library is barely literate. Rice really needs an editor. I liked Blood and Gold on tape. Anne Rice is normally the only author I like listening to the abridged version of. She gets an edit for this version, if only for clarity and length. This time, her "style" stills shines glaringly through. All the things that make writign bad are seen here. A guy walks into the room, action stops while we get a long description of what he looks like, his history and his heritage. People explain plots of past books, or fill in plot holes, in devices that read as overly manufactured. I'm reading The First 5 Pages as I listen (not literally at the same time of course). I see every example of bad writing shown off in this book. The tape is also a tad annoying as the reader his chosen to give Lestat a slightly German accent. Umm, Rice goes through lengths in previous books to explain what his accent would be, and it ain't German. It should be French Pronviencial accent, with English learned from noir mysteries. Rice's device wherein all of her books are part of her fictional world is getting annoying at this point. It helps the characters sum up plot, and allows them to know things that they shouldn't know; but it is a contrivance that beats you over the head like a billboard ad for her other books. As I read in X... I could understand the first two, but the subsequent novels get to be too much. At this point, wouldn't the whole world know about vampires and the Talamaska? She also brings in her Mayfair witches and other books that don't really need to be brought in. I think this also restricts Rice in her plots. Lestat has become an utterly annoying whiny bitch. I think after Tale of the Body Thief he should have just died and let the other vampires take over the vampire chronicles. I don't care about Lestat anymore.
Rice has an overblown sense of how good she is. I see some of the same characteristics in Poppy. I also see sales slackening in both. Neither of these writers are going to do horror anymore, by their own admission. Perhaps because their readers are being turned away. I fear that their work will delve more and more into the mainstream, where their foibles will be much more noticable as readers won't give them the leaway for plot, if they don't like the plot. We don't need another Taltos. Poppy's wierd gay fiction seems to be losing her readers. Other writers have done this topic better and the shock value has gone away. This is why a writer must constantly be at work at their craft and not become complacent because people are still buying their books. If you get bad enough, or even just stagnate, readers will find someone else. There are plenty of new writers coming up. The backlash from the Walmart business model that only promotes those big names, even if it is a flop, is starting to wear on readers. I see the horror genre at the verge of another rise. I don't know how long it will take, or what heights it will reach, but I'll be here for it, and probably after it has gone; and again when it cycles back again :)
I continue to wade through Peaceable Kingdom. I love shorts as I can do them in small doses. Ketchum's shorts have much less gore, a more quiet horror. Perhaps that chill is hard to sustain for a whole novel. The gore gives some payout and the build does not get boring. I love both his novels and his shorts. He is just a masterful writer. He has the ability to send the chill down my spine for those suspense-filled reads that build like microwave popcorn. He also has the ability to do the gross-out. When you combone the two, you get a combo that sticks with you long after you've put the book down.