CHARACTER LISTS: COMPARING BURN COUNTRY TO PETER ROBINSON'S AFTERMATH

In a recent post, I examined the police procedural sub-genre in terms of its characters and approach to characterization. As a noted authority on the subject explained, "To be a police procedural, a novel must have a set of police characters and--preferably detailed--descriptions of their work as they investigate one or more crimes."

When police characters are added to family members, witnesses and/or suspects, non-police characters involved in the investigation (coroner, forensic pathologist, etc.), and others, the list of characters appearing in a police procedural will be somewhat longer than, say, a private eye novel or a cozy mystery featuring an amateur sleuth in a small town.

Are there too many characters in BURN COUNTRY? To answer this question, it's important to compare its character list to other procedurals, so that apples are being firmly compared to other apples.

To do so, I chose one of Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks novels, AFTERMATH (2002), pulling it off the shelf more or less at random. I charted the characters in this novel using the following criterion: I only counted characters who are named by the narrator and have a speaking part in the story. I excluded unnamed characters who speak, including several SOCOs who interact with Banks or Annie for at least a page, and I excluded characters who are named but do not actually appear in the story. Fair enough? I then charted BURN COUNTRY and compiled a comparable list.

The results? There are 53 characters in AFTERMATH, 18 of which are police characters. On the other hand, there are 48 characters in BURN COUNTRY, 16 of which are police characters.

Are there too many characters in AFTERMATH? This novel has 7442 ratings in Goodreads, 40 of which are 1-star ratings. None of the 1-star reviews mention the number of characters. (Interestingly, fellow crime fiction author Val McDermid gave it 1 star!) Additionally, there are 113 2-star ratings, and none of these reviews mention too many characters. In fact, several have solid praise for Robinson's characterization. There are 837 3-star ratings, and I could only spot one review that complained about the number of characters. Et cetera, et cetera.

The point? Readers who enjoy police procedurals understand that novels in the sub-genre contain more characters than novels in other mystery sub-genres, but they appreciate them for the richness they bring to the story!

Crime Fiction Grab Bag No. 9

Time for our first reach into the crime fiction grab bag for 2013. What's new and exciting out there?

Quill & Quire has published its spring preview, which includes the following authors of Canadian crime fiction and mysteries:

Jack Batten's latest novel in his  mystery series featuring the protagonist Crang, Take Five, is due out in April from Thomas Allen Publishers. The previous novels in this series are Straight No Chaser and Bloodcount. 

Ian Hamilton offers the fifth in a series featuring Ava Lee in The Scottish Banker of Surabaya due out in February from Anansi. 

Anthony Bidulka is scheduled to have two novels out in April from Insomniac Press.  Sundowner Ubuntu continues his Richard Quant series of mysteries.  Where the Saints Go Marching In is the first in a series of thrillers that will feature the protagonist Adam Saint as a disaster-recovery agent.

Alan Bradley's fifth novel featuring his protagonist Flavia de Luce is entitled Speaking from Among the Bones (Doubleday Canada, January).

Mike Knowles will debut a new series with S.O.B. this May published by ECW and featuring P.I. Frank Sullivan.

Cathy Ace will publish her second novel, The Corpse with the Golden Nose, which is a cozy mystery featuring Professor Cait Morgan.  The novel is to be published by TouchWood Editions in March.

For further details, see http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/in-the-magazine/spring-preview-2013-canadian-short-fiction-crime-fiction-and-poetry/ .

Peter Robinson, who has published his twentieth Banks' novel, Watching the Dark, is the subject of an interview with J. Kingston Pierce in the Kirkus Review, January 8, 2013, at http://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/robinson-heats-cold-case-watching-dark/.

If you're a fan of Scandinavian crime fiction, the latest Kristina Ohlsson novel, Silenced, has been released in its UK edition and will be available in its US edition in March 2013.  For a review of this and other recent Scandinavian crime novels, see http://scandinaviancrimefiction.wordpress.com/.

And for the Telegraph's take on the brightest and best in crime fiction and thrillers, see the January 13, 2013 edition at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9200912/The-best-recent-crime-and-thrillers-January-13.html (included are books by Connelly and Wambaugh).

Crime Fiction Grab Bag No. 5: Bouchercon and More

This week's crime fiction grab bag begins with the 2012 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the annual event for crime fiction authors and fans that took place this year in Cleveland, Ohio.

Highlights of the event included Louise Penny receiving her third Anthony Award for Best Novel for A Trick of the Light. Meanwhile, Mystery Readers International awarded their Macavity Award for Best Novel to Sara Gran for Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, the first book in her new "Claire DeWitt" series. As well, Canadian crime fiction authors hosted a Meet the Canucks dessert event, as reported by Linda Wiken.

In other news, Margaret Cannon of the Toronto Globe and Mail provides an encouraging review of Linwood Barclay's new novel, Trust Your Eyes, along with a look at Karin Fossum, Marek Krajewski, and Ian Hamilton.

Meanwhile, Adam Woog of the Seattle Times praises The Cutting Season by Attica Locke, Dan Fesperman's The Double Game, and The Hot Country, "Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler's foray into crime fiction."

Finally, Jack Batten of the Toronto Star provides another series of mini-reviews on Peter Robinson's Watching the Dark, Bones are Forever by Kathy Reichs, Barclay's Trust Your Eyes, and Hamilton's The Red Pole of Macau.

Enjoy!