It all looked so promising. A Victorian-era murder mystery set in the 1800s. Except the dialogue felt to this reader more like a script from the 1980s.
The Railway Detective
There are a lot of points on which Marston has hit the bullseye. The plotting is spot on, his unravelling of the story can’t be faulted, the logic behind the investigation is strong and believable. But the main character isn’t particularly likeable, the villain’s motivation isn’t (I don’t believe) entirely plausible, and the words spoken by the characters feel strangely detached from the era in which they were spoken.
That’s where my important lesson lay.
My book is set in the years spanning 1856 and 1871 – almost the same era as this one – and like this is a detective story. The other thing it had in common, in the first draft, was fairly modern dialogue. I had wondered about that and whether it mattered, and having read this book I now see that it really does.
You can paint a scene, describing the look of the characters, the clothes they wear and the utensils they use, but unless the reader believes that they live and act within that scene in a logical and fitting manner, they feel detached and less believable. That, I think, is why I didn’t feel empathy towards the characters in this book – I didn’t believe them, so I invested very little time in hoping for a good outcome for each one.
Needless to say I’m spending a lot of time revising my own dialogue in the hope of convincing more readers that the words spoken – although spoken by fictional entities – really could have been said when I say they were.
And, of course, making sure my (hopefully) published sentences aren’t as tortuous and twisted as that one.
is the second in Westbrook’s Moneypenny trilogy dealing with M’s right-hand woman and James Bond’s sometime muse. Not a great premise, you might think. Apart from a trip to the races in 
. That’s on my shelf waiting to be read; it can’t be long before I’m reaching to take it down.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, though, often had me measuring the bulk of unread pages between forefinger and thumb, asking myself how long it would take me to get to the end. It is, then, both a long book and anlengthy book. Or at least, it was for me.
, so bag yourself a copy and it’ll see you well into New Year.
I put off reading this one for ages because, let’s face it, it’s long. Very long, if we’re being honest, and the thought of hauling around a 1100-page book for as long as it would take me to read on a daily commute didn’t appeal.
is a saga in the truest sense of the word – a sweeping story of the middle ages and the building of the fictional cathedral of Kingsbridge. Hugely frustrating when the villains get their way, genuinely edge-of-seat when the heroes get close to their goal, racy when required – slow when you need it, it’s a masterpiece that had me hooked from about 20 pages in.
.
