The way too damn many people die in crime novels

How many crime novels have you read that begin with a prologue in which a character never knew when he or she woke up that fateful day that it would be his or her last?  The only suspense in such prologues is whether the last thing the character sees will be a red mist of pain or a murky pool of blackness.

I read yet another such prologue this week, and it reminded me of one of the great exceptions to the rule, Stuart Neville's Collusion. Yes, that novel begins with a prologue, and yes, that prologue ends with the point-of-view character dying. But here's how Neville writes the death, ends the prologue, and segues into the novel's main action:

"He barely registered the detonator's POP! before God's fist slammed him into nothing."

Besides avoiding cliché and writing a prologue vastly superior to most, Neville is arguably more respectful of and serious about death than many crime writers. Who the hell knows if black pools or red mists are really the last things a murder victim sees? Until some crime writer dies, comes back to life, and reports the proceedings in a prologue, I'll accept Neville's punch into nothingness as a more accurate description of death.

How do you feel about prologues? About death described from the dying character's point of view? Does anyone do it well?

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Pest is (usually) prologue

If I ever run a competition for best prologue, I may have to specify best prologue from outside Northern Ireland. That's because Adrian McKinty's Fifty Grand has probably sewn up best-prologue honors for the foreseeable future, and Brian McGilloway's prologue to Bleed a River Deep is pretty damn good, too.

McKinty's is full of menace, deadpan wit and suspense. Here's how McGilloway's opens:

"The last time I saw Leon Bradley with a gun in his hand ... "

McGilloway wastes no time obeying Raymond Chandler's dictum, and it gets better. There's a nice twist and a violent climax, but the little story breaks off just before its dénouement, leaving matters to be resolved in the novel that follows.

Why mention these two fine examples? Because I'm usually wary of prologues, suspicious that they're lazy shortcuts for authors who don't know how to begin and so begin with the end. How do you feel about prologues? If you don't like them, why not? If you do, what makes a prologue effective? Feel free to cite some good ones.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010