Lessons in Reading and Writing

The other night I blogged about reading a cozy mystery that started off way too slowly. I’m here to apologize, sort of. I may have made a hasty judgment, but there are also lessons to be learned by both readers and authors. The action did start too slowly—I haven’t checked, but I bet it was at least three chapters until we discovered a body. Before that the reader was entertained with a Bible study group’s afternoon of board games and their all-day picnic. What I as a reader didn’t realize was that this was the fifth book in an established series, and many readers already felt comfortable with the characters. So maybe they were more interested in board games and picnics.

Lesson for readers: don’t start with the fifth book in a series. Go back to the first.

Lesson for authors: even if your series has an established audience, get right into the action.

After the discovery of the body, this novel, which I’m still not naming out of respect for the author, took off in a hearty manner. There were clues and red herrings, plot twists and turns and blind alleys. I was hooked to the extent that I read the last page reluctantly—I liked these people and liked being in their world (even if they did sing unfamiliar hymns scrolled on a screen—first time I ever heard a logical explanation of that: when singing, people raised their eyes heavenward instead of being alone, locked into the pages of a hymnal).

Long story short: I ordered the first book and found, to my joy, that the action started almost immediately. So now I’m a follower of the series.

Lesson for authors: series really matter a lot. If you can create a world that readers are drawn into, feel comfortable in, you’ve got return readers. I hope to capitalize on that in my future writing. I have seven books in the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, three in the Blue Plate Café series, and two now in the Oak Grove Mysteries. I’m well more than halfway through the fourth Blue Plate book, and I think I’ll stick to my three series for the foreseeable future.

A final note: Kudos to my unnamed author for thinking to set a mystery series in a Bible study group. The unexpected is one element of the cozy mystery—who expects all those murders to happen in Cabot Cove? Similarly, who expects a Bible study group to be involved in solving murders. Nice thinking out of the box.

Excuse me now. I’m in the midst of a really good mystery.