Kevin's Watch

Which of the RS books do you like the most?

Well, I've only read one so far, just finished The Man Who Killer His Brother last week. I liked it - it's not Covenant or Gap, either in the plot's complexity nor the richness of the characters and setting, but it still displays SRD's skills as a writer. And we still have the SRD trademark of protagonist as damaged goods and tortured soul.

I prefer fantasy and sf to mystery, but I tried to read this book as if it was Donaldson's only effort and I was reading him for the first time, and I still enjoyed it.

One question - why do I see this frequent observation in reviews that it's not a mystery? Now one can possibly say it's not a good mystery, for whatever reason, valid or not, but I see people say it isn't a mystery, period. And I don't understand this assessment. There is a question and subsequent search for answers as to who is kidnapping young girls and what is his motive. If that doesn't qualify this novel as a mystery, I don't know what does.

Are the later Brew novels more suspense-thrillers? Is that why I keep hearing they aren't mysteries?

Not at all, Roland. They're all mysteries. The reviewers must be defining "mystery" as "insoluble puzzle," or something like that. SRD's strongest interest seems to be in how the events effect the psyches of his protagonists, not in stumping his readers, but that's all to the good in my view.

Mysteries initially got a bad name among literature purists (still have it to some degree), because the plotting is so often approached dryly. Some mystery authors focus on the plot to the detriment of character development, and others seem to have the idea that letting the reader understand the characters would give away the surprise.

SRD lets us see his first-person protagonist, Brew, almost completely, and the mystery is maintained with naturalness by allowing the reader to understand just as much of the secondary characters as Brew does. It works.

SRD's solutions are sometimes not as much a surprise as other mystery writers'. That's because he doesn't cheat. All his suspects have an inner life which they act according to, and their actions grow naturally out of it. His mysteries are character-driven, not maze designs.

Oh, did I forget to answer your question? Favorite Reed Stephens book. THE MAN WHO FOUGHT ALONE. See the Favorite Character thread to find out why.

Good explanation, Joy, Thanks.

I agree with Joy. The Man Who Fought Alone is definitedly the best of the lot. I also see a trend where the series could be moving in the "hard-boiled detective story" direction, as opposed to being considered "mystery". This probably would be more suitable to the way SRD writes things, or what do you think?

A distinction without a difference, to me. I think of hardboiled detective stories as mysteries. I don't read most hardboiled authors, though. I've read FOUGHT three times, plus occasional refreshing dips.