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Jun. 29th, 2010 12:14 pmI am doing so awesomely at this resolution I started over a year ago of "reading mystery series ALL THE WAY THROUGH from BEGINNING TO END," guys. I am only two books away from finishing one of my current mystery series! And three books away from another! And . . . still have nine books to go in the Great Cadfael Reread of '08-????, but that is Ellis Peters' fault for writing FIVE MILLION books and not mine, so. Anyway, my promise to myself is that once I finish any one of the above series, I get to start reading either Ngaio Marsh or the Mrs. Pollifax books.
The one I have three books left in is the Easy Rawlins series, because I read two more over these past few weeks - Bad Boy Brawly Brown and Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories. Bad Boy Brawly Brown is pretty normal Easy Rawlins fare - no massive timeskips and no major life changes for Easy, although he's still dealing with the death of [SPOILER] - and centers on Easy trying to get a young would-be revolutionary safely out of an activist group that's about to turn criminal. I liked it, but, weirdly for me, I actually liked the collected short stories lot better. Normally, I'm not as much a fan of episodic; I am all about the overarching plot. But in this case, the stories work together to show an emotional arc that spans the length of the book, while all the mysteries are nicely bite-sized. This is nice for me because I can actually follow what is happening most of the time (often difficult in long noir plots). It's also nice for me because I tend to be significantly more interested in the emotional arcs in these books than the actual single-book mysteries anyway (this is also generally true across the genre, for me) so the focus in the collected short stories was pretty much exactly where I wanted it to be.
What do you guys think? Do mystery short stories sometimes work better than full-length? (I know there are GREAT DEBATES about this as far as Sherlock Holmes goes . . .)
The one I have three books left in is the Easy Rawlins series, because I read two more over these past few weeks - Bad Boy Brawly Brown and Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories. Bad Boy Brawly Brown is pretty normal Easy Rawlins fare - no massive timeskips and no major life changes for Easy, although he's still dealing with the death of [SPOILER] - and centers on Easy trying to get a young would-be revolutionary safely out of an activist group that's about to turn criminal. I liked it, but, weirdly for me, I actually liked the collected short stories lot better. Normally, I'm not as much a fan of episodic; I am all about the overarching plot. But in this case, the stories work together to show an emotional arc that spans the length of the book, while all the mysteries are nicely bite-sized. This is nice for me because I can actually follow what is happening most of the time (often difficult in long noir plots). It's also nice for me because I tend to be significantly more interested in the emotional arcs in these books than the actual single-book mysteries anyway (this is also generally true across the genre, for me) so the focus in the collected short stories was pretty much exactly where I wanted it to be.
What do you guys think? Do mystery short stories sometimes work better than full-length? (I know there are GREAT DEBATES about this as far as Sherlock Holmes goes . . .)
