Thursday, February 04, 2016

DBB meets ITW: A Thrilling Interview

My former colleague Gwen Florio, who has taken up the higher calling of writing crime novels, interviews me over at the International Thriller Writers' "The Thrill Begins" Web site.

Gwen asks good questions (no surprise there; she used to be a reporter), and here's one I had especial fun with:
Q: What do you look for when you review a book? Any make-or-break issues?

A:
No make-or-break issues come immediately to mind, though I prefer novels that do not begin with prologues marked “Prologue,” especially if those prologues are about a protagonist recovering consciousness and finding her or himself tied up, unable to move, in a dark room or a damp basement, etc. And especially if the prologue is set in italic type and narrated by a serial killer.
Read the entire interview at http://thrillbegins.com/2016/02/04/an-interview-with-peter-rozovsky-of-detectives-beyond-borders/
 
Our discussion is part of a series of interviews with reviewers, critics, publishers, editors, and authors that has so far included Todd Robinson, Janet Hutchings, Carole Barrowman, Benoit Lelievre, and Kristopher Zgorski,

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

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2 Comments:

Blogger adrian mckinty said...

Peter

I quite enjoy flash forwards at the beginning of books and movies. Fight Club is a case in point.

I like it when narrators say "how did it come to this?" (usually some horrible situation) and then they unpack how it came to this.

I think thats why I enjoy the reality show Banged Up Abroad show so much. It always starts the same way: with some duped naive Westerner in some godawful 3rd world prison and then it takes you through the process of how this came to be.

I realise that a lot of readers/viewers enjoy the suspense and dont like the spoiler aspects of flashforwards but I do. I especially like it when you have an unreliable narrator giving you a flash forward (Fight Club) again.

Prologues I can take or leave.

February 05, 2016  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Sure, but the stakes are high, An author who begins a novel with a "How did things come to this?" prologue had damned well better create a situation so perilous and nightmarish and, above all, singular, that a reader can't help turning the pages.

I suspect you'll remember how much I liked the opening to Fifth Grand. That is as good an example of a prologue that I can remember, though I think you showed the good judgment not to call it "Prologue."

February 05, 2016  

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