Mario writes:
>[Michael Connelly's ]books are long mainly because
his plots are
>devilishly complicated (excessively so, sometimes).
<snip>
>At one
>point, more precisely in The Last Coyote, he seemed
to give
>Harry Bosch more play time than he deserves (to me,
he's
>not an interesting character) but that's the
exception.
What do you find uninteresting about Bosch? I haven't read
all of his books, but I've found the plots of the ones I have
read deceptively simple. There are usually a lot of red
herrings to clear away, but then the answer seems to be
staring you in the face. I think he does a really nice job of
turning characters in on themselves - they're not exactly
what you think and then you get satisfied with what you think
they are and then he takes it one step further (in principle
it's what Brigid O'Shaughnessy tries to pull on Spade though
I don't think he ever really buys it). This can happen over
the course of several books, as in Bosch's relationship with
Lieutenant Pounds, and later with Chastaine.
The converse of Connelly's disguised simplicity would be
Ellroy. I've only read one Ellroy book (LA Confidential) but
the striking thing to me about that particular book is that
nothing is a red herring. The plot is ultimately quite
brilliant, but the book left me cold because everything
seemed so calculated. It's too perfect, none of the messiness
of life. I also found his characters cartoonish - bloated and
skeletal at the same time, if that makes any sense. Ellroy
inundates us with backstory, yet the characters still seem
insubstantial in some fundamental way. They're more like
grotesque neurosis-driven robots than human beings.
I do agree with the comment (Juri, I think it was?) that
character is often best revealed through action. I don't
necessarily think that an excess of contemplation makes
characters better - witness my preference of the earlier
Elvis Cole books to LA Requiem, or Pelecanos's "A Firing
Offense" to "Shame the Devil." In both cases, I like the
later book a good deal, but they both
(LAR particularly) threaten to get weighed down with
contemplation. They don't necessarily tell me more than the
earlier book, where the characters are just "doing."
Carrie
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