The Case of the Foolish Protagonist

 

Since my past few blogs have talked about being selective in what I read, I thought this might be a good time to reprint a post from February 22, 2016 that talks about why I read some cozy mysteries (loosely defined) and not others.

The Case of the Foolish Protagonist

Why do so many female cozy mystery writers insist on demeaning their own sex by creating a protagonist who does rash things that put her in danger? That’s the fastest way to make me abandon the story. Yes, some females are foolish, and so are some males. But don’t glorify that foolishness by making it the preeminent characteristic of a protagonist I’m supposed to admire.

As a teenager, I was an avid mystery fan. I read detective stories like Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe and police procedurals like the 87^th Precinct books by Ed McBain. And at a time when money was tight in my family, I even had a subscription to the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. But my all-time favorite mystery writer was—and is—Agatha Christie.

I like puzzles, not chases. Whodunits, not thrillers. P.D. James, not John Grisham. And for me, the best mysteries include the characters’ psychology as part of the puzzle.

That’s one of the reasons I like Agatha Christie so much. The solution arises inevitably out of the murderer’s inner character, and sometimes out of the victim’s character as well. Even if I know who did it from the beginning (as I do now that I have read each book several times), I always enjoy that exploration.

But none of the books I enjoy have a protagonist who does stupid things.

Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe and Hercule Poirot all fall into their mysteries naturally. Because they are professional detectives/private eyes, people bring cases to them. And because they are professionals, they rarely take unnecessary risks. The Miss Marple books start differently. Her involvement in so many murders is an epic coincidence. But once you get beyond that, the rest of the story follows naturally from the situation and the characters.

More importantly for my point, like the detectives mentioned above, Miss Marple doesn’t take unnecessary risks. She listens and silently analyzes the case, comparing the characters involved in the murder to other people she has known, but then she tells her conclusions to the police and lets them take it the rest of the way. She seems such a sweet—although cynical—old lady, that the murderer never realizes she is a danger to him.

Cozies with foolish protagonists may be popular in the short run, but they will never last the way Agatha Christie’s works have.

And I’m glad about that.

Permission to Stop Reading

No, I’m not giving you permission to stop reading altogether. Rather, I’m giving you permission to put an individual book down before you finish it and to never pick it up again.

Growing up, I knew it was okay to be selective about which books I read, but I thought it was a crime to start one and not finish it. I even made it through Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence in a college class on English novels. (Well, maybe putting that one down would have been a crime since it was part of the grade, but I hated every word.)

Then I got to graduate school, where new students in the psychology program were required to take an introductory seminar. The only thing I remember about the seminar is that we were assigned Portney’s Complaint by Philip Roth. Hard as I tried, I could not get through it. Fortunately, the seminar was ungraded, but that was the first time I gave myself permission to leave a novel unfinished.

Even after that, I felt guilty whenever I didn’t complete a book. It got easier after that, however. Now I believe it’s a crime to waste my time on a book that I don’t enjoy unless it’s research or there is some other educational reason for reading it. For example, reading a highly-rated book that I find totally boring may give me insight into how readers think. Or it may not. If it isn’t doing even that, I won’t keep reading.

That’s one of the lessons I’ve learned in life. If a book isn’t worth reading, don’t waste your time on it.

You have my permission to stop.

Free Books are Worth What You Pay for Them

Following up on last week’s blog post, one of the ways I evaluate a Kindle book is by the price, by which I mean that I rarely download a free book. There are exceptions, such as classics that are in the public domain and some Amazon “First Reads” selections, but mostly my experience has been that free books are worth what you pay for them.

I subscribe to a service called BookBub, which notifies me of daily e-book deals. The prices for a Kindle version range from $2.99 to free. It often lists books by authors I am familiar with and enjoy, and I’m happy to pay for them.

On the other hand, the free books are by unfamiliar authors or, once or twice, by authors I have read and vowed never to read again. Sometimes they are even touted as having “over 5000 five-star Goodreads ratings.” I’m convinced that those authors join a network of writers who agree to give five-star ratings to each other’s books without even reading them.

Still, there have been times in the past when I was suckered into “buying” a free book, such as the one in the photo at the top of this page. After all, what did I have to lose? A lot, as it turns out.

I’m a busy woman who already has a long reading list. Any time spent on a bad book is time I can’t spend on a good one. And although I’m much better than I used to be, something in me still balks at putting a book down before I’ve finished it. (That’s the subject of next week’s blog post.) So I don’t usually buy free books.

As I said, there are exceptions. Classics that are in the public domain are often turned into e-books as a public service, so you can find novels by Charles Dickens and Jane Austin for free. Some of versions are better than others (e.g., fewer transcription errors), but the content is there.

The other exception is Amazon First Reads. This is a benefit available to Prime members that provides early access to books that will be released to the public the following month. Members who have signed up for the benefit usually get one free book out of about eight choices each month, although occasionally Amazon ups it to two free books. There are some months where none of the books sounds interesting, so I don’t take any. If something does sound interesting, I wait until a number of people have read it and posted reviews, and I decide then. Sometimes I download a book, start reading it, and decide it wasn’t worth the price, but many of them are. And at least I know that a traditional publisher has vetted it.

Most of the time, however, a free book is worth what you pay for it.

 

Choosing a Good Read

 

I read approximately ten books a month for fun, which does not include the ones I read to research my own books. Granted, those ten books include some middle-grade novels that aren’t as long as adult novels, but it’s still quite a bit. The problem, though, isn’t that I read so many but that I can’t read more. Even though I’m choosy about what goes on my “to read” list, it never seems to shrink and sometimes grows. So how do I ensure that the books on the list are worth the time?

Mostly I take advantage of two tools offered by Amazon and other book sellers: the “look inside” feature and customer reviews.

I generally start with the “look inside” feature to get a feel for the author’s writing style and word use. Sometimes that’s enough to tell me that I don’t want the book on my reading list. For example, if the author consistently uses bad language or throws the heroine into bed in the first few pages, then I know it’s not for me. But my experience has been that many authors wait until they think they have you hooked before they go there, so if I’m still interested after reading those first pages, I put most of my reliance on the reviews.

Reading tastes differ, and I don’t usually find the more glowing reviews to be helpful for books. So although I look at the overall rating (4.1 in the example above), I go straight to the one-or-two star reviews. Among those, I discount the ones that show a general dislike for the author’s style since, as I said, reading tastes differ. Instead I look to see if any of the reviews point out excessive swearing or explicit sex or—perhaps worst of all—bad research. Those reviews tell me that the book would be a waste of my time.

Unfortunately, there are still times when I start reading a book only to discover that it was a mistake, but the “look inside” feature and the customer reviews weed out most of the bad ones.

And I’m grateful for that.