The weather is dreary and uninspiring so I switched into intense reading mode. Four books arrived Monday from Amazon. I expected them to last me for at least a week but I got through three of them in two days. they were all by Peter May, my latest obsession.The second of his trilogy set on and around the island of Lewis ‘Lewis Man’ is out in hardback so I treated myself and felt justified because I did enjoy it as much, if not more, than the first ‘The Blackhouse.’ It was slightly less grim though the harshness of life on the islands and the bleak windblasted landscape doesn’t make for a cosy story. I felt cold, damp and uncomfortable for the entire reading of both novels.

I wanted to find out what his writing was like when he wasn’t setting the action in his homeland. He wrote a series that I think were televised called the Enzo files, so I bought the first of those, ‘Dry Bones’ and also his recent venture into cyberspace called ‘Virtually Dead.’ What he is very good at is creating a sense of place. The Enzo files are set in France where May lives and he succeeded in taking me back to some holiday in France and visits to Paris, which has to be counted asa worthwhile investment and much less trouble than actual travel. 

What I’m less impressed by are his characters. It’s all in the dialogue when authors create characters. Some do it so well that I feel I’ve met them and they become personal friends, enemies, or at least people I serve regularly in the shop. PM has the old gardener speaking in much the same voice as the educated professor. It’s not the dialect, no amount of ooh’aarring is going to create the person, it’s the length and rhythm of the sentences and the choice of words. 

‘Virtually Dead’ was very different to the previous three, being played out mostly in SL - Second Life, a complex alternative computer generated reality, a ‘virtual world’ which, (and this is an odd thing to say) really exists. it must have been an entertaining challenge for him.

I think he follows all the serious ground rules for the good detective story which means I can get a buzz out of guessing the baddie, so I give PM top marks for plot (although I do have a grievance about the twist/untwist/and twist again at the denouement of The Blackhouse. All too many twists within a short space of time.)  

PM gets a high score for Pace, Plot and Place. 

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I’m easily seduced by novels. I conspire with authors to magic me away into their world and I’m not usually disposed to look out for faults in their technique because I want to be transported; that’s what I’m there for. Maybe this flush of critical observation is a result of reading so much in such a short space of time. I've become  hypersensitive to differences of style and to the conclusion that some writers are natural adepts at their craft, whereas some work hard to become adept. The latter write skillfully and yet (not quite ‘but’) their characters don’t walk out of the page into the reader's world; I wouldn’t know them if I bumped into them at an airport or railway station; they don’t come home with me or follow me into the kitchen once I’ve put the book back on the shelf. I might remember their history, the events in their lives and their given eccentricities but they themselves have no form or substance. It’s difficult to see exactly how that happens. I think it’s all in the dialogue.

Reading some novels is almost a Zen experience (perhaps I’m getting a bit Pseud’s Corner here but who cares!) When I read those by naturally gifted writers the words fall away and I’m no longer observing, I’m there.