As part of directing more of my energy toward writing, I’ve also been looking more at reading. To that end, I perused my local book store for authors who were current and seemed to be having some commercial success. That’s when I stumbled across the books of Stuart Woods.
There were several shelves of his books, and many of them are in series, of which he has about five. I finally found his novel called Choke (Harper 1996). It tells the story of a tennis pro and old detective solving a murder or two. That’s the part that had me a little leary, but I decided to give the book a try.
The reason I was reluctant to read the book is that I’ve never really liked crime fiction. This is a leftover reaction from younger days when I found that the mysteries were rarely that exciting or complex. My young mind could not connect with the characters so I didn’t really care that someone was killing them off. Given their language, and the language of the narrators, murder seemed okay.
To my great surprise, I started reading the book and could not stop. Really, the book is just over four hundred pages in I read it in one night. The writing grabbed me quickly and kept me going. I was impressed; so much so that my next fiction reading excursion is Mr. Woods’ novel Under the Lake (Signet 2011).
I immediately went into analysis mode to figure out what it was about this writing that kept me reading. The only other author to do that to me was Donald Harstad, who also writes crime fiction, but he’s an old deputy from my native Iowa, so I could more easily relate. I tried to compare the two.
The great thing about Harstad’s books is that the author has full knowledge of his complex world of characters and he can keep them all straight. The narrative voice is that of an old deputy, so it comes from the author’s own experiences. By having a complex world where all the people of the fictional county have clearly defined relationships, the reader begins looking for those relationships and the crimes take on a more personal aspect. Again, I may have been biased because the stories take place in a fictional version of my backyard.
The novel Choke, on the other hand, has none of Harstad’s characteristics. There are many viewpoint characters depending on who is in the individual scene. The story takes place in southern Florida, a thousand miles from my backyard. The characters have professions and personal histories with which I could not connect. Why was I so interested?
As far as I can tell, and I’m seeing more of this as I start reading Under the Lake, is that Mr. Woods is very good at not telling the reader anything useful. He does tell the reader a great many things, but always stops just short of giving the details of the situation. That teasing seems to form a very effective carrot on a stick.
When Choke ended, the last of the details emerged, and that was very satisfying. Persevering through the book paid off, making for a very pleasant experience. It’s easy to see how Mr. Woods has been able to get over sixty books published. I look forward to reading more of his work and, frankly, trying to learn to do what he does.
One of the questions I have is: will this sort of technique be useful in fiction that is not crime oriented? The whole point of the crime thriller is that it contains a mystery to be solved. If one is not going to solve an actual mystery, could the thrill of finding clues carry a story forward or would it just add frustrating complexity? Since most stories center on a main character overcoming an obstacle, one could imagine that trying to find a solution would be a sort of mystery.
Another question on my list is: would this work on something far shorter than a novel. In a novel, there would be time to drag out the details. How far can a short story be dragged? Again, there is a fine line between a useful technique an annoying one.
Regardless of the answers to those questions, I believe that I can learn much from Mr. Woods. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to devote more time to his works.