Bill Crider opined:
>I feel that way about the details in Kaminsky's Toby
Peters books
sometimes,
>too, as if Kaminsky is sitting in a library somewhere
copying stuff out
>of a newspaper.
I don't know about the Toby Peters books. I've never been
able to make it through one. However, Stuart released a book
titled VENGEANCE a few months back which I did read. It's
interesting, because he seems to have applied the technique
of piling on pointless detail in this book, too, which is set
in the present.
It's also set in Sarasota, which is both Stuart's adopted
home town and my own. Sarasota -- this will come as no
shocking revelation to anyone who has ever visited -- is a
town almost completely void of personality. It's got about as
much in common with Miami, say, as Des Moines has. It's an
odd setting for a crime story by any standard, and the
technique SK uses to try to give the reader a sense of place
only makes the problem that much more obvious.
What he does is indulge is an orgy of proper-noun usage. From
"the Dairy Queen on 301" to "Sarasota News and Books" to
"Caraguilo's on Palm Avenue" to, well, you name it. It's as
if -- to paraphrase Bill's analogy -- he sat down with a
stack of newspapers and read nothing but the ads. Maybe he
thought that the mere mention of a name would be enough to
give the reader that AH HA! moment of recognition. Fat
chance. You can get away with that if you're writing about
New York, Chicago or Miami, whose myth is grown so large that
even folks who've never been there can be fooled into a sense
of familiarity, but try it with a city as innocuous as Sara
and you end up with something as compelling as a AAA Tour
Guide.
Odd that a old pro like Stuart Kaminsky, who has done some
creditable, if not very HB, work -- the Leiberman &
Rostnikov series, for example -- should make such a mistake.
Hometown pride, maybe. PB
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