Sun 22 Apr 2018
Archived Mystery Review: ANNETTE MEYERS – The Big Killing.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
ANNETTE MEYERS – The Big Killing. Xenia Smith & Leslie Wetzon #1. Bantam, hardcover, 1989; paperback, 1990.
For what it’s worth, this is the best story of murder on Wall Street since Emma Lathen seems to have stopped writing, and for all that, not that good. It’s also the first mystery to be tackled and solved by the executive headhunting team of Smith and Wetzon, both female.
And apparently both rivals for the eye of police detective Silvestri, who really solves the case, sort of a split-screen affair, half dealing with missing tapes, half with a stash of stolen drugs. Unfortunately, the connection is that of only coincidence, merely a million-to-one shot, if you will.
PostScript: And so Silvestri agrees, on page 348, which is maybe another indicator why I’d begun to lose interest long before. There are 350 pages in all, and that’s simply way too long for a mystery novel. It takes some pretty good characters to keep a good hold on a reader’s attention for that long, and sorry to say, Smith and Wetzon and their problems kept me involved for only 200 pages or so.
April 22nd, 2018 at 8:57 pm
Other readers have liked this series more than I did. There were eight in all, seven between 1989 and 1997, with one final one in 2005.
Little did I know that I was fighting a trend with my small rant about how long this book was. It was, of course, a harbinger of Things to Come.
April 23rd, 2018 at 5:38 am
If only we could go back to the days of 160 page Gold Medal originals or 200-250 page hardbacks.
April 23rd, 2018 at 4:47 pm
The problem is you still only have 160 to 200 pages of plot all too often.
April 23rd, 2018 at 7:00 pm
To take one prime example, Elizabeth George’s most recent book is The Punishment She Deserves, which came out last month. It’s over 700 pages long, which is fine of course for readers who want to get their money’s worth.
But of those 700 pages, I wonder — and I have no idea — how many of them are directly involved with the plot, and how many are only ancillary?
I am
April 24th, 2018 at 7:52 pm
George usually has multiple plot threads aside from the mystery going including the private and expansive lives of her series characters, but I won’t argue that a good read at 700 plus pages might be a great one at 250.
My problem is less with big names who I know can fill pages, than unknowns or lesser knowns who don’t always pay off. There are classics of the genre than are expansive books like THE WOMAN IN WHITE or UNCLE SILAS, 200 pages of interesting story loosely fit into 450pages isn’t a good thing for writer or reader.