Yeah, Another Book
So I finished Book Number 7. It's a lurid pulp novel in the Hard Case Crime series. The title is The Confession and the author is Domenic Stansberry. There's some nice atmosphere about Marin County and some effectively creepy sex writing and a twist ending handled with reasonable skill and grace. But as is often the problem in noir, particulary modern noir, the subsidiary characters have no real personality. Often, I find a character appearing in a key scene at a key moment, and I can't remember who they are or where they entered the story. That's a sign of a troubled book, not a bad attention span.
Nevertheless, this small book has its merits, and I'm still very excited about the slow movement back toward grit in literature. I don't want fancy writing or coy narrative tricks. I want a good story, well-told, but with that extra something that distinguishes literature from certain kinds of bestselling dross. That's once of those things that makes literature endlessly interesting to me. It's almost impossible to pinpoint what makes it good. I can't think of another art form that has so many intangibles tied up in its creation.
Of course, I could just be blathering because literature is the only real art I know how to practice. But if I could just figure out the perfect formula....
That's what most writers want. And that's what so few writers ever achieve. How certain writers arrive at perfection, or near-perfection, can never be quantified.
Anyway, The Confession by Domenic Stansberry. Not perfection. Though would you really expect perfection from a book with a cover painting that depicts a woman being strangled to death with a necktie? Probably not.