Reviews and Reviewers
Monday, June 29th, 2009The standard advice for writers regarding reviews and reviewers is ignore ‘em. Some writers claim they don’t even read the reviews of their books.
I don’t see how anyone could possibly have that much self-control. It’s just too interesting and exciting for me to find out what people think of the project I’ve been working on for the past couple of years.
So far, thank goodness, the reviews of The Cutting (with one notable exception) have been very good.
Yesterday, Sunday, July 28th, the first review from a major daily newspaper, the Providence Journal, came in and it too was positive.
Here are some of the highlights:
“Recommended
“The Cutting”: Bright, appealing hero carries gruesome thriller.
A thriller promises a heinous crime that is imminent: There is urgency, mounting suspense, a quickened pulse as pages turn. One reads a thriller to be frightened in safe surroundings. But often they are formulaic, failing to scare.
Not so with this debut novel, which introduces a homicide cop, Mike McCabe, an appealing man who respects women, loves kids, and is brighter than most. He has the memory of a hard drive, storing extraneous facts that he can retrieve and attach to a loose end, connecting strands of information until a meaningful pattern emerges. In McCabe’s line of work, that’s a useful talent…
…You will suspect the motivation behind the crimes before McCabe, but your insight was intended. Bookstores have been looking for a writer of popular fiction who can reliably produce a bestseller. James Hayman, a Brown grad, has invented a cop with sophisticated tastes. If your summer reading includes a psychological thriller, this one’s for you.”
Obviously not all reviewers will be as positive about my books as the reviewer for the Journal. Still, for me, one of the great pleasures of producing a novel is seeing what people, including reviewers, think of it.
Ignore reviews? No way. I shall await the next, whether from a newspaper or an individual reader, with baited breath.
