We all know the drill. “Once upon a time” something happens. The good guys eventually triumph, and evil is punished proportionately. We, as readers or viewers (medium depending) live happily ever after.
How difficult is that?
George Peppard’s plans always came together. Tim Hutton’s do now. And no one, absolutely no one, messes with Angela Lansbury. Period. This is as it should be. This is the Tao of narrative.
Can you tell how irritated I am? We’ve been watching a pleasant but strangely unsatisfying murder mystery series on DVD. I bought the first novel in the series, to try to suss out what bothers me about the show. Oy vey, was that a mistake.
Okay, so I figured it out. Bad things happen in this book, as is necessary for a story, especially a murder mystery. Here, the bad things keep happening. Then we find out the worse things that caused the bad things to happen in the first place. Then it ends. Aargh!
Someday I will write the post I’ve begun a dozen times, pondering why we enjoy something as gruesome as a murder mystery. In the meantime I will watch Top Chef and reread stories wherein Evil and Rudeness are punished, and the hero(ine) wins in the end.
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