Completely forgot to post this ...
Elizabeth George at Kepler's on March 31st - she didn't read from her latest book, instead she spoke about her writing process. I loved it - she's very clear about what it takes for her to write successfully, and she's a very entertaining speaker. I'd read somewhere earlier that the new book, With No One As A Witness, is about a serial killer, and thought, Oh no! I've had my fill of serial killer thrillers, I really don't want another one. But then she described the common serial killer thriller formula: killer kills over here, detective detects over there, and two narratives gradually approach each other. Then the serial killer picks a victim that we care about, and it becomes a race against time - will the detective catch the killer before the killer offs the victim we like?
And she said very rightly that that had been done over and over, and she didn't want to do that, because she likes for every book to be a new challenge. And so she decided that she would show her serial killer in his daily life - a psychopath, she said, like Ted Bundy, living a quiet normal life amongst friends and family - and the game for the reader, if you will, would be to try and find out which one of several characters was the killer, before she reveals it herself.
And now of course I want to read it, because that sounds like a good new angle on things.
Sounds like a good book. Thanks for the tip - I'm always looking for a good one.
Posted by: Ellen | Apr 27, 2005 at 06:18 PM