The gun that is on the wall in act one...

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 38%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover List: #8 (former number 1)

Book 2 out of 107

The story is moving along at a good clip now, and our hero, Virgil Flowers, a super cop who works for a police agency I think Mr. Sanford made up is working on the mystery of who is bombing PyeMart, which is the unholy offspring of Target and Wal-Mart

Let's take a look at some the techniques our prolific and expert writer is using.

He is using the Multiple Mystery Technique. It's not enough that we want to figure out the identity of the bomber, whose POV we enter about every third chapter, but we also want to figure out how the bomber got into the seemingly impenetrable Pye Pinnacle tower, 60 stories of glass, steel and security cameras.

He is using the Work For The Reader technique. In chapter 11, Mr. Sanford has his detective list out the clues, saving the reader from having to do it. It's fun to think about thing along with Virgil, like we are working on the case together. Now, what would be especially impressive, is if at the end of the book, when we finally learn the identity of the bomber, we could take a second look at that list clues and see how we might have figured out the mystery from them. Is the solution staring us in the face? That would be a neat trick! 

But it's hard to do. M. Night Shyamalan did it perfectly once with The Sixth Sense, but was never able to pull off that trick as well again. 

Anton Chekov supposedly said that the shotgun that on the wall in Act One goes off in Act Two. In Shock Wave, the boat being towed by the main character in Chapter 2 will surely be blown up by, let's guess, Chapter 23.

I'm also guessing he's using the old Shotgun On The Wall technique. That's where, as the urban legend has Chekhov saying, the shotgun shown on the wall in Act One goes off in Act Three. The shotgun in this case is the fishing boat Virgil towed with him to the little town where one of the bombings happened.

That boat has no reason for being there, yet its been mentioned several times. So let's see ... Will the bomber blow it up? Will Virgil get involved in a high speed boat chase? Will he actually go fishing with the thing? Place your bets!

What have we learned? Again, we see the effectiveness of multiple mysteries, and also, we see how nice it is for the reader if you list out the clues and guide her through the detective's thought process. 

So far, this has been a fast read, funny in parts, shallow in others. I don't get the feeling Mr. Sanford is swinging for the fences with this one. It's not going make me scream his name from the roof tops (and I spent some roof top time screaming about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo well before it was a big hit in the U.S.). However, it could not be a more pleasant read and a good case study for wannabe thriller writers.