Fri 12 Jul 2019
SUSAN DUNLAP – Too Close to the Edge. Jill Smith #5. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1987. Dell, paperback, July 1989.
Detective Jill Smith works out if the Homicide-Felonious Assault division of the Berkley police department, and in this case she solves the murder of a handicapped woman dumped from her wheelchair and drowned in a few inches of water at the edge of the bay.
What I don’t know about police procedure you could write a book about, but the investigating techniques displayed here seem awfully chaotic and uncoordinated to me. And while Dunlap is a good writer, someone should tell her not to make up clues as she goes along.
–Reprinted from Mystery*File #14, July 1989.
July 12th, 2019 at 10:30 pm
You make a good point Steve — Details in a book have to SEEM real whether they are or not. And if the details are real but don’t seem plausible, the author isn’t doing it right.
July 13th, 2019 at 12:57 am
It’s probably best to at least read a police procedural novel before writing one.
July 13th, 2019 at 1:36 pm
Dan and David, I do agree. And yet, and yet, there were 10 books in the series, the last in 1997, before Susan Dunlap jumped to writing books in three or four other series. The most recent mystery I can find for her came out in 2016, so she is a writer of some longevity as well as ability.
I no longer remember any details of what it was that got me so down on this one. For whatever reason, we obviously weren’t in sync.
July 14th, 2019 at 7:39 pm
Steve,
I wasn’t questioning her writing ability, just noting that certain sub genres require a bit of expertise or research to pull off. It never bothered me that Michael Lord or Lt. Valcour didn’t behave much like real detectives, but it would have if Steve Carella, Gideon, or Martin Beck hadn’t. Depends on what type of story you have to tell.
I’ve read a bit of later Dunlap, and while it isn’t really my cuppa, she writes well and intelligently. Just seemed to exceed her reach in this element.