Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Name Your Poison

From: DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net
Date: 31 Aug 2006


Chris wrote:

"When you take it a bit beyond the characters being true to themselves and into discussing the action of the book itself, which makes me wonder you or others think of so many of Bruen's books. The Taylor books sure, but especially the Brant series are often, if not resolved, then ended with events ranging from the completely random to the viscously absurd.
"And I love that about them. You pay attention not to round up a series of clues, but because anything might happen."

I've been thinking about this very idea since recently finishing Calibre. I thought t was great, but I can't imagine anyone reading it in isolation and being satisfied. I don't think of it as a complete book, but as an installment in a much longer, continuing story, kind of like a single episode of The Wire. Whenever I recommend the Brant books, I tell the person they must read all of the White Trilogy before forming an opinion. Even I, who had been a Bruen fan for a while when they first came out, was disappointed when I finished The White Arrest. It wasn't until I read all three and got to know the characters, the rhythms and threads of their ongoing lives, that I really started seeing how good they were. And, like you, I like the seeming randomness of the solutions, and how they might remain unsolved for the characters (though I'm glad Bruen gives the reader resolution -- for instance, Brant has never found out who killed his dog, Meyer Meyer, but the reader knows).

Mark

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