----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Burton Smith"
<
kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com>
> Al Guthrie wrote:
>
> >For what it's worth, I thought "God.." was a
well-written, entertaining,
> >compact thriller. Hardboiled but not in the
least bit noir.
>
> Well, granted, it was a thriller. And we can argue
until the cows
> come home about whether it was well-written or
entertaining, but gee,
> Al, compact?
>
> It's something like twice the length of an old Gold
Medal PBO. It may
> be a lot of things, but it's not compact. Part of my
problem with it,
> in fact, was how overwritten it was, how he never
used a sentence
> when a bloated paragraph or three would do. In fact,
some editor
> taking a weedwhacker to the damn thing might have
made it a much
> better book
Forced into a bloated sentence or three when I foolishly
believed a single word would suffice: At 306 pages, "God Is A
Bullet" is on the short side for a modern thriller. There's a
lot of action in it. Some people might describe that
combination as compact.
Kevin, you can't compare the length of GIAB with Gold Medal
PBOs. The average length of a modern thriller is no longer
159 pages. More like 350-400, I'd guess.
Al
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