My next read was BLIND FEAR by Lynn Abercrombie (Pinnacle, c2006, ISBN 0-7860-1728-7).
Set in Atlanta, Georgia it starts with a young rookie officer searching out retired Hank Gooch (fuzz that was) to help locate Officer Mechelle Deakes who has disappeared. Deakes has been kidnapped, blinded and locked in a room and has a certain amount of time to solve one of their old cold cases or she will die.
This book is written in 3rd person and is apparently the second in a series although I don't think that matters as this story is fine if read as a stand-alone.
The first sentence:
Hank Gooch ran the glowing bar of steel through the blazing tube of the propane forge one more time, pulled it out, thrust it into the water.
I enjoyed the story but I didn't care for the dialogue. I have a picky-picky thing about writing dialogue per the locale. I understand that if they live in Atlanta, Georgia they are going to have an accent but to see it written is just weird to me. I guess I want to envision in my head the way they talk...I don't want the author to do it for me. The words are one thing, the inflection another.
Like I said, picky-picky.
1 comment:
I couldn't agree more! I had such a hard time with Dorothy Sayers's Five Red Herrings, because the Scottish accent, as rendered in her dialogue, made grasping the meaning of what people were saying virtually impossible.
I read this as well and the accent was just as off-putting here. We're bright people; we *can* take accents as read. They're tricky to do in writing and there are very few authors who can really carry them off.
-- Jeannette
www.beyond.jeannettecezanne.com
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