Bad Romance
This is taken from a class on readings in mystery. The book is Romance by Ed McBain.
Romance reminded me of a Dario Argento movie in many ways. If you don’t know Argento, he is an Italian director who became famous in the 1970’s for his thriller/horror movies. It reminds me a lot of Deep Red, a movie about a murderous insane mother. Argento would do a pretty good job with this as a movie. He does beautiful work with stabbing and blood.
Romance, however, got a bit long in the tooth too me too early on. I think it came down to the idea of likeable characters. I liked the cops in the story, but I was glad that the Actress died. In a mystery, I don’t think you want the reader to not really care who killed the victim. The mystery element in the novel wasn’t strong enough for me to really care about whodunit without the compassion for the Actress.
One thing that I did like and learned from Romance was this: series writing can be rough for the reader. There were certain elements in this story that wouldn’t appear in a stand alone or if they did wouldn’t have as much significance. I think the romance in Romance had a tacked on feel. I understand why it was there though. This is a series in which the entire series is the master work not the individual novel. It’s Gestalt reading if you will, the whole as opposed to the parts. As a reader who had no real intention of following this series after this book, I eventually just started skimming over the sections of Kling and Sharon, SharOn, SharYn, Sharyn. I also didn’t like the running gag. It doesn’t work in print. It’s like reading: what’s black and white and read all over? The joke just isn’t there.
McBain does some wonderful characterization, however. I thought he nailed the pompous playwright, Freddie, who makes such a difference between authors and writers. He even refuses to see himself as a genre writer because it would demean his precious ego. That was just tasty. Also the guilty party was a well described, sociopath for the means of getting ahead. She almost had a manic flare to her, but the plan was too well thought out for that. I think McBain kept a good rein on the psychopathological stuff. If he would have Andrea as a psychotic or full blown manic, I’d thrown the book across the house. (I’d say room, but my house has no interior walls. Ask me about it later.)
In the hands of Argento, this could be a cracker jack movie.
(Now for those keeping track of which of these books I’ve like and which I’ve disliked. I started out really liking Romance, but I figured it out too soon and the Kling Sharyn plotline bogged me down too much. So it was an so-so.)
