Month: November 2015

Book review: Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Well, she can certainly churn them out, I’ll give her that.

I’ve bumped a couple of books out the way so I could get to this one: the third in the Cormoran Strike series, skilfully penned by J.K. Rowling’s alter-ego. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two, and so expectations were running pretty damn high for book number three. And I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed… for the most part anyway.

This episode has our hero  wading through the dregs of human society to solve find a serial killer who’s struck a little too close to home. The book follows much the same setup as the previous two (why change a winning formula): a gentle intro for the newcomers, a grisly murder, then  a classic whodunnit skilfully woven around a tale of unrequited something. Epic stuff, and I would have enjoyed it as much as the first two books, except for one small thing: too many words.

CareerOfEvil_large

Now it could be because I’m focussed on editing my own stuff at the moment, so perhaps I’m a little sensitive, but I did find that the book meandered around a bit. Every location was described in poetic prose that was a little strained at times, and the omnipotent viewpoint could have been smoother. I’ve never been a fan of leaping from brain to brain over the course of a few sentences. It’s wonderful device when you can pull it off, but we can’t all be Virginia Woolf, so I did find the overall effect a little jarring in places.

The pace was much much slower than previous books in the series, which gives the reader time to reflect on the changing relationship between Strike and his partner Robin (female – just sayin’). They continue to be wonderfully believable, flaws and all, as were the rest of the cast: the heroes were instantly likeable, and the perverts were about as scummy and unpleasant as you can possibly get.

The plot was intricate, beautifully crafted, and burned slowly up until the last few pages when someone lit the blue touch paper and we cannoned to a conclusion  I hadn’t seen coming. (From about a third way through the book I was convinced I knew who the killer was; now I know that I was cleverly steered in the wrong direction).

As I said, the book had a few problems that could have been sorted out with a few more rounds of editing, but on the whole it was a cracking good read, not so much for the thriller aspect as the fascinating relationship between Strike and Ellacot.

Definitely recommended.

Seven out of ten.

 

 

Plagiarism as a cottage industry …

I picked this one up from the Guardian:

Prolific romantic fiction writer exposed as a plagiarist.

The heist was simple: Laura Harner took the work of  Becky McGraw, a successful writher of heterosexual romantic fiction, and rehashed it (almost word for word!) as a piece of homosexual romance.

The scheme hinged on the Harner’s belief that people who read heterosexual fiction  don’t read homosexual romances. Well, she was wrong: they do – and that’s how she got caught.

Having being rumbled, Ms Harner had this to say:

In transforming two M/F romance stories into an M/M genre, it appears that I may have crossed the line and violated my own code of ethics

Really.

Apparently, Ms Harner has churned out seventy-five books in five years. That’s quite an output, so I’m sure a lot of romance writers are wondering exactly how long she has been violating her own code of ethics.

It’s a sad story – sad and inexcusable – but it did make me think:

Seventy-five books in five years. That’s fifteen books a year.

That’s a lot of books.

Why did she have to write (however she did it) so many? I think this the thing that concerns me  most about self-publishing. To sell in quantities you have to

  1. price your books very low
  2. market yourself like mad (and you’d have to do that even if you went with a traditional publisher)
  3. churn out novels at a hell of a pace

Ms Harner seems to have found herself a shortcut to number 3.  Now, I’m not saying that the industry is the reason for her violating her own code of ethics, but I do wonder if we are selling ourselves short by becoming ‘anything for a £1’ shops. I’ve heard many arguments (and they’re all valid) that this is simply the way of things: there are so many self-publishers out there that pricing yourself above 99c is just pricing yourself out of the market. That may be true, but if that’s the case then we should get used to industrial plagiarism  becoming something of a norm.