That didn't take long. Shotgun has gone off.

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 46%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Book 2 out of 107

Boom!

I really didn't expect the boat to blow up that soon, but there is its flaming wreckage, right at the 46% mark. Now it's personal. Virgil is pissed.

Boom! The boat went up at the halfway point.
In thrillers, I'd guess 50% of all plotpoints are marked with an explosion.

This development brings up an important point..outlining. Of the three authors I've read for this project, big plot points happen almost exactly at the 25%, 50%, and 75% marks.

With Shock Wave, at the 25% mark (chapter 7), Virgil shifts from passive to active. Up until then, he is ordered to the crime scene, he hangs around the blast site, he meets the local police, and he doesn't do much more than take the situation in and think.

After the 25% mark, he begins taking action, making decisions, doing things his way. The second quarter of the book is all about Virgil the detective, and we get to ride along with him. We are privy to his thoughts and reasoning. We are thinking over the clues, making strategic moves, including an innovative way of crowd sourcing suspects, which is surely a first for a mystery novel.

(Crowd sourcing is a way of using the "wisdom of the crowd." For instance, if you ask 1,000 people what movie will make the most money this weekend, the odds are that they will be right. In this case, Virgil is asking a bunch of people to anonymously guess at who the bomber is based on the set of known facts. The theory is that the suspects who get a high volume of votes have a high chance of being the killer.)

Then, at just about the 50% mark, the boat goes boom. Now we are in a new direction, and moving even faster. Now there is an atmosphere of danger. The bomber is getting bolder, and Virgil is now making decisions based on anger. 

Let's make another prediction. Around the 75% mark, the story will shift again, from mystery to thriller. My guess is that the bomber will be revealed (ending the mystery) and the rest of the novel will be a chase to grab him. There will be a ticking time bomb somewhere and Virgil will save the day at the last possible second. 

What is still a question is who is the bomber? And would it have been possible for us readers to have figured it out from the set of known information? I really don't have a clue. I'm guessing the bomber's alter ego hasn't been introduced to us yet. But we will see!

What have we learned tonight? Outlining is your friend. And making things go boom every once in a while is a good idea.