The wikipedia entry on that book is nicely snarky:
Critics also note that Cornwell admits that she did not have a theory about the murders until about a year before her book came out and is convinced that the first name mentioned to her as a possible suspect must be the one who really did it. They note that, unlike authors of popular crime fiction, criminal investigators generally don't get to pick the person whodunnit before they do the research.
Wasn't her suspect that painter guy with the weird penis whose paintings she bought up? Yeah, that book. I don't think one can properly call it snarky when it's just....accurate.
It's been my experience that almost every behavior of the Victorian male can be accounted for by assuming that any given one of them will be an alcoholic, a syphilitic or both. Well, and then there are the laudanum addicts and those who had been driven insane by religion.
Um, how can an author not know who committed the murders that are at the center (presumably) of a book she has written? Isn't the book (or book series?) about these murders and who did them? I know that many people who write online for fun, usually doing fanfiction, often write without a plan (just start writing and see where the story goes) but shouldn't someone writing a mystery kind of know everything that's really going on?
No wonder she's getting bad reviews.
As for "how authors should respond to negative reviews" the answer is, "By writing a better book." Of course, that's assuming that the author plans to go on writing. Otherwise, the way they should respond is by--not.
Actually, Lawrence Block has said that sometimes he didn't know who committed the murder, but he figured out whodunnit by the end. (And the second draft--I don't recall if Block did a second draft--cleans them up.) I'm sure there are other mystery writers who discover the murderer through the course of writing the book.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2007-11-22 03:14 pm
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OTOH the Pentagon thing is nuts. :)
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Critics also note that Cornwell admits that she did not have a theory about the murders until about a year before her book came out and is convinced that the first name mentioned to her as a possible suspect must be the one who really did it. They note that, unlike authors of popular crime fiction, criminal investigators generally don't get to pick the person whodunnit before they do the research.
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Sickert, I think
(and so what if he wasn't even in England for all of the murders?)
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No wonder she's getting bad reviews.
As for "how authors should respond to negative reviews" the answer is, "By writing a better book." Of course, that's assuming that the author plans to go on writing. Otherwise, the way they should respond is by--not.
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