Happy New Year!
Hope your 2009 has gotten off to a great start. I certainly feel ready to get back to things (especially after 2008’s last inauspicious moment) and get the year off on the right footing.
The first day of the year also brings some new pieces and the like. My review of Carol O’Connell’s new standalone novel BONE BY BONE runs today at the Barnes & Noble Review, which also attempts to explain why I think she’s sui generis in the genre:
[O'Connell's] authorial voice has little patience with conventions or formula or
linearity. If crime novels are the equivalent of sonata form, adhering
to the tight constraints of exposition, development and recapitulation,
O'Connell adheres to serialism, reshuffling convention according to
larger whims and broader canvases. Reading one of her books is like
squinting at a Seurat painting up close, each page a step backward
until the pattern emerges, shockingly whole, at the end — with more
than enough loose ends to make us wonder if there's a whole other
pointillist work of art embedded within the original frame.
linearity. If crime novels are the equivalent of sonata form, adhering
to the tight constraints of exposition, development and recapitulation,
O'Connell adheres to serialism, reshuffling convention according to
larger whims and broader canvases. Reading one of her books is like
squinting at a Seurat painting up close, each page a step backward
until the pattern emerges, shockingly whole, at the end — with more
than enough loose ends to make us wonder if there's a whole other
pointillist work of art embedded within the original frame.
Also up, courtesy The Bat Segundo Show, is the full interview with Patricia Cornwell that is the basis for my LA Times profile of her from last month. Interviews are best left up to the listener to judge without editorializing, but I am mighty curious what people think…