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Showing posts with the label Lee Child

How Much Is Enough?

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Thanks, George Michael! My version of that question doesn't apply to "Star People" but rather to series books. How many books can a series contain before it gets stale? I guess it depends on the writer, and to some extent on readers. Some series characters I have stuck with for a long time, like Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, Dean Koontz' Odd Thomas, and Michael Connelly 's Harry Bosch. Some books are more memorable than others, but in the end it's the main character that brings me back when the next book is released. I will admit in at least one case above I recently reached my limit. I'm tired of the character and have no curiosity about what the next adventure is. Some series characters grow and change, and some don't. Harry Bosch moves through time, falling in love, gaining a daughter, rejecting change, and recently retiring from the police force. Grafton takes a different a

Disposable Bad Guys

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There's been a discussion on one of my chat groups concerning the casual killing of "bad guys" in movies and books. There are two schools of thought. First, it's escapist fiction, so it's supposed to by over-the-top. I enjoy the characters in NCIS-LA, but in almost every episode there is a scene where they blow away everyone who might be a bad guy.    No one ever investigates afterward. Nobody gets put on administrative leave until it's determined the shooting was "righteous."    No foreign government demands the U.S. answer for agents who shot up a whole neighborhood. If they even make a peep, someone, usually Henrietta, "handles" it. The question of whether all those deaths were warranted is ignored.   The assumption is the good guys are the good guys, so they get to kill bad guys. Period. The opposing arguments hold that indiscriminate killing sends the wrong message, in fact, a whole bunch of wrong messages.    Shoot first