The action in Sleeping Beauty is immediate—an oil spill, a chance meeting with an heiress on the beach, abduction, ransom, entanglement. I admire the way plots happen in detective fiction. In this one, it’s especially good.
Ross Macdonald is masterful. And here’s what I love: nobody knocks on a door and hires the detective. It’s all done on the fly. He finds himself enmeshed in the story and it seems natural. It’s almost like he was ambushed by the story and the world solidifies around him.
Love it.
You read a guy like Ross Macdonald and you feel humbled. I’m not there yet. I’m still feeling my way around this world. But I want it to feel suddenly real–inevitable like that. Who says detective fiction isn’t art?
i devour mysteries. i love the silly ones (christie) and the big, juicy dark ones (mina and rendell.) and all the ones in between. like james burke. his dave robicheaux series and billy bob holland books roll out inevitably, like you said. (even though they’re about two places i have NO desire to ever see: Louisiana and Texas). and those accidents, or inevitabilities, are the best beginnings of detective fiction, i think. it’s hard to write casual accidents and weave them into a purposeful story that leaves you no choice but to say, ‘Of course it had to happen that way!’ go ‘head on, khanh!
I’m a mystery junky, too. When a good story comes together, it reminds me of one of those chemistry demonstrations where the professor stands in front of the room in a lab coat and drops the contents of a beaker in an Erlenmeyer flask. Voila: from clear liquid suddenly appears strange substances of vivid, weird colors.