Can't we do better than this?

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 100%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Book 3 out of 107

Look. I'm not a book snob. I like genre novels. I like detective stories and sci-fi and fantasy and pretty much any kind of well told story other than romance. Even then, The Bridges of Madison County made me blubber like a school girl.

But I have to say ... Shock Wave, despite its sales and it's 4.5 Amazon stars, is mediocre at best.

I liked Virgil, or at least the idea of Virgil, the long-haired hippy detective who favors vintage T-shirts and likes to go fishing as part of his mystery solving process.

However, Virgil never comes alive. I never get a sense of how his worldview affects his detecting, his relationships, or how he's changed by dealing with this crazy bomber who keeps blowing up completely innocent people. And after Virgil, almost all the characters kind of blur together. Many of the men have a way with absurd metaphors and wise cracks. The women are all sexy and vaguely smitten with Virgil.

A novel, even a genre novel, should be just a little more than this. Shouldn't it?

Mr. Sanford is a good writer. He comes so close at times to getting at something deeper, something funnier, something more exciting. Every time he comes close to a real moment, to a real surprise, he backs away. 

Virgil never makes a surprising choice, not one. Virgil ponders god before he sleeps, but despite the fact that people are dying at a disturbing rate, it doesn't seem to phase him or color his chats with whatever deity he thinks is listening.

And by the way, Virgil gets a guy killed. He mistakenly fingers Wyatt as a suspect and the bomber kills him in an effort to get the case closed. Virgil doesn't seem to care, never gives it a second thought. His last thoughts in the book are about the three women he recently met and whom he didn't bang.

I'm sure this book took a lot of effort to write. For all I know it took a year of labor, of re-writing, editing, of getting feedback, of polishing and then more re-writing. Mr Sanford created an mildly entertaining novel, and it reads like he did it with ease. That's the problem. It feels easy. Once read, it leaves nothing behind, leaves no mark on the mind. 

When I want that kind of cotton candy, no-substance entertainment, I can watch TV. There is an episode of Law & Order on somewhere pretty much 24 hours a day. From a novel, I want just a little bit more. I hope my next one delivers that little bit more. 

Now cracking open the new John Grisham, The Litigators.

Is he or isn't he?

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 88%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Book 3 out of 107

The last 25% of Shock Wave isn't quite playing out as I predicted, which is a good thing.

At 75%, it seemed like it was a lock that Wyatt was the bomber, that he had used a paraglider to get into the Pye Pinnacle, and that he did it because the new PyeMart was going to devalue a big piece of property he owned. He stood to lose millions.

With all that put together, it seemed like Mr Sanford had set things up for a big chase scene with some big explosions.

We get a big explosion, but we don't get a chase. We get a stake out. We get following Wyatt around from his job to the movies to McDonald's to the movies. The tension doesn't come from the question of "Will they catch him?" but from "Is he really the bomber?" There is no real evidence that he is, just things that point his way.

Not sure Mr. Sandford is getting paid for product placement, but if he is, he is getting paid by Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, McDonald's, Applebee's, Target, WalMart, Home Depot, the movie Pirates of the Caribbean and a few others. However, it's really not about product placement. It's about what small towns look like these days, how they exist within a web of corporate chains. It's not social critique on Mr. Sanford's part, but his way of keeping it real.  

This section works because it's fun to ride around with Virgil, hear about his romantic problems, order Starbuck's with him, and spy on the suspect. It's not blood pressure raising stuff, but it does feel real. It feels like what an extended stake would feel like. It feels kind of like fishing (and fishing is discussed a lot in this book), with pleasant moments passing pleasingly by until you get a few moments of high excitement.

The stake out does indeed include a bit of high excitement. An explosion, obviously.

Even after that, the mystery persists. Is Wyatt the guy or not? There is still a mystery to figure out. At this point, after this much set up, I have to predict that Wyatt isn't the guy. He is now feeling like a big red herring. For some reason, I think maybe, just maybe, it's another character who has been in the background, and who now seems like a shotgun that hasn't gone off yet. 

I'm going to guess Thor. Or at least, I'm going to guess more is going on with Thor than the minor comic relief he provides every once in a while.

So what have we learned? We learned that you can make compelling scenes by stringing together mundane, real-feeling moments, just so long as the character's goal is clear and interesting. And we learned that Mr. Sanford really likes Starbucks (me too!) but isn't crazy about Pirates of the Caribbean.

Where all my predictions come true

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 77%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Book 2 out of 107

Just like I said, right at the 75% mark, Virgil figures out who the bomber is. Spoiler alert...It seems that it is a guy named Wyatt, a Gulf War vet who likes bragging about his kills.

How did he get on top of the Pye Pinnacle, the massive skyscraper built in a cow pasture? He used a paraglider. That dangerous flying hobby is what created the trail of clues that lead Virgil to him. Now the chase is on. Will Virgil catch him before he blows someone else up? We'll see!

A few things I'm seeing in Sanford's writing...

Many of his characters have a way with metaphors...

"She's crookider than a bucket of cottenmouths."

"An ass like a couple of slow pitched soft balls"

There are a few others I can't think of at the moment, but its a noticeable habit and makes all the supporting characters feel oddly similar, like everyone is imbued with a rural Minnesotan smart assness. It's the kind of thing that a writers group full of amateurs would point out and criticize, but  Mr. Sanford, not being an amateur, gets a pass.

Another thing he does is he just assumes that the reader has read every Virgil Flowers novel and knows all about his views on god, his taste for worn rock band T-shirts, his left-leaning politics. I wish I had got to know Virgil better in the first few chapters because I would have cared a lot more later on when he fell into danger.

On the other hand, Mr. Sanford goes places that other thriller wirters don't. There is a subtle theme of questioning god, with Virgil offering up prayers every night that are more like self-therapy sessions, and another character saying, "I don't know why anyone with any sense would believe in god." There is almost enough there to hang a literary theory on, almost enough to say Mr. Sanford has more on his mind that telling a fast-paced story where things go boom and our hero saves the day.

But not quite that much. It's more like a dash of literary spice than anything with an artistic intent. Mr. Sanford is writing by the numbers, and getting paid well to do so. Why mess with the formula?

What have we learned? We learned that when you are an active reader reading not for pleasure but to learn how to write within a genre, it becomes a little too easy to predict things. It takes some of the fun out of a story. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Sandford could afford to be a bit more creative with his formula. 

Let's see what happen in the last 25%. Maybe he will surprise me.   

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.

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. 

Shock Wave -- Shockingly Competent!

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 27%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Book 2 out of 107

John Sanford has written 36 books. John Sanford's Prey series has made him one of the most successful thriller writers working today. John Sanford is not John Sanford. His real name is actually John Camp, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

John was born in 1944 and doesn't seem enthusiastic about social media. His official website feels like it was made in 1995. It is almost all text with a few book covers for art.

There is a Facebook fan club for Mr Sanford, with all of 2,700 members in it. The author doesn't seem to have stopped by. I'm guessing someone at his publisher made the page, and John doesn't really care. He's 67 years old and every book he writes makes lots of money. He doesn't need to coddle his fans, or blog, or tweet, or do anything he doesn't feel like.

All he does is write good books. 

Shock Wave, so far, is one of those. It is conventional, sticking to all the guidelines of thriller writing.

Let's review the check list...

1. Male lead character with charm, good looks, a way with the ladies and a strong sense of morality he keeps disguised with his casual demeanor? Check.

2. Horrific crime that kicks the story off in a big way? Check.

3. Mystery bad guy that we are going to guess the identity of until about 2/3rds into the book? Check.

4. Rich people? Check.

5. Colorful cast of suspect? Check.

6. Gore? Check.

7. Sex? Not yet, but it's going to happen. I don't think it will reach Sandra Brown levels of explicitness, but who knows! One can only hope.

So yes, it's a by the numbers kind of book. So why is it entertaining? 

Because Mr. Sanford is funny. At times, Shock Wave sneaks up so close to satire it could give it a kiss on the cheek.

The description of the glorious PyeMart offices (a stand in for discount big box stores like Walmart and Target), and the buzzards that circle them and shit on them. The bomb that destroys the boardroom (and kills a woman), but spares the board because they were busy drinking at 9 in the morning. The descriptions of the large women playing volley ball somewhere in rural Minnesota. The pink T-shirt our hero wears to the crime scene, because he's just that cool and that comfortable with himself.

There is a wink to Mr. Sanford's writing, something knowing about it, something that says, "Just because I'm writing a by-the-numbers thriller doesn't mean I can't show off every once in a while."

What have we learned from the first quarter of Shock Wave? 

The formula works. If you stick to what has worked in thousands of other books, you too can probably write a readable thriller. (I'm not saying its easy. Not at all. I am saying its possible.) 

However, if you want to be a bestseller, you probably need to add a little of your own secret sauce. With Mr. Sanford, it seems to be humor. With Sandra Brown, it's sex. With John Hart, it's a flair for language and some insane violence, not to mention a talent for jamming a record number of plot twists into 300 pages.

What will mine be? I'm going to go with cuss words, lots and lots of cuss words. And I'm going to make fun of Star Wars a lot. Publishers, let the bidding war begin!