Nantucket Five-Spot: An interesting thriller, filled with plausible characters

Nantucket Five-Spot by Steven Axelrod is subtitled "A Henry Kennis Mystery," but it's more thriller than mystery because we know (or should know) at page 14 who the bad guy is. We just have to see how much mayhem he plans to cause on Nantucket island one summer at the height of the tourist season.

Henry Kennis, the narrator, is Nantucket's chief of police. (Axelrod thanks Nantucket Police Chief William Pittnam "for his continuing advice and support.") The book starts with a bang. In the first paragraph, Kennis and Franny Tate, a former love, are having a romantic dinner overlooking Nantucket harbor "when the first bomb went off."

Almost immediately, the island is overrun with state police, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force agents as Kennis and his officers are elbowed aside for crowd control and "support."

Of course, Kennis and his staff know the island and the year-round residents—and the residents know their chief, an important factor. Indeed, Nantucket itself is virtually a character in a book filled with characters, and Axelrod's characters have strong feelings about the island's changing landscape (the second bomb partially destroys a nouveau country club).

As Kennis says about a careless driver, "That's something I hate. People who drive like that. Sometimes I want to arrest everyone—throw them all in jail, impound their cars and their cell phones and their computers and their TVs, and give their stupid McMansions which they use two week a year to the homeless people who need a roof over their heads."

Nantucket Five-Spot is satisfyingly complex with a pulse-raising conclusion. And, perhaps because Axelrod has an MFA in writing from Vermont College, the writing often crackles: "He was a slender man with lots of well-groomed blond hair framing his hawkish face, blue eyes set tight together, sharp nose, thin lips clinched around his indignation, sucking it like a sourball. He spoke with a slight southern accent...." Another example: "For some reason she reminded me of my daughter, soberly explaining that popping all the bubble wrap would make it easier to fit the plastic into the recycling can, when both of us knew she just wanted to do the firecracker dance."

For readers like myself who trip over foreshadowing, the novel did cause me to stumble once or twice: "Just how catastrophically, tragically, fatally bad that choice had been she was going to learn before the end of this close and humid summer day...." And as I wrote a moment ago, the story is complex with wheels within wheels that might put off some readers.

But on balance, I think Nantucket Five-Spot is an interesting thriller, filled with plausible characters, and a plot that edges right up to but never quite tips over into the preposterous.

Why every writer needs an editor

A couple posts ago, I showed a proof copy of my new novel with 22 yellow tabs that marked my editor's queries. This was a proof for a book that had gone through nine drafts, a thorough editing, a spell check, and four exceptionally careful first readers, all of whom found something to question or correct. By the time I uploaded the file to CreateSpace, I was confident the book was entirely clean. I was wrong.

I'm not going to cite all 22 queries, only enough to suggest why every writer needs an editor.

Every yellow tab a query

For example, in the sentence, "She sounded as if she would seriously consider, too...." the context requires an "it" after "consider."

The mystery takes place in 1986. To indicate the time, my narrator looks at a newspaper headline: "Apparent Attempt Made to Kill Indira Gandhi." Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984.

The setting is an appliance/TV retail store and in one place I described the avocado and harvest gold major appliances. By 1986 appliances were almond and white.

In the sentence, "I heard a woman in the stereo console display..." makes it sound as if she'
s part of the display.

A character says, "This business has been a fixture on North Street for more than fifty years...." Fifteen pages later another character uses the identical words. A hundred pages after that, a newspaper article uses the same words. No.

A character is Hanna in one place, Hannah every other place. A character works at Dunkin' Donuts sometimes and at Dunkin Donuts—without the apostrophe—other times. (Dunkin' Donuts is correct.)

The sentence "I figured things weren't going well at the Jonkers..." has one too many words: "the."

The sentence "Are there any any questions?" has one too many "any."

The sentence "Like she made his was too dark" is missing something; it should be, "Like she made his coffee too dark."

Listed like this, these flaws are obvious. Hiding in a 70,000-word book, they're easy to miss. No one of them changes the setting, the characters, or the plot in any way. I believe most readers, caught up in the story, will skip right over them. Some readers, however, will see them and be taken out of the story momentarily—the last thing I want.

I want my readers to be immersed in the story, not distracted by avoidable glitches. And that's why every writer needs an editor.

A simple witness to a satisfyingly complex story

On page 2 of Bob Siqveland's Simple Witness, Jethro Plack—a very bad man—murders a young woman in a Minneapolis parking garage. It's Jethro's bad luck that one Harold Bartz, aka Bandit—not the sharpest tool in the shed—witnesses the killing. Jethro does catch Bandit's truck license number, however, and the game's afoot.

Bandit, smart enough to realize he's in danger but, rather than going to the cops with what he's seen, lights out for Las Vegas. Vegas turns out to be a city of opportunity for Bandit and he induces two other dim Minneapolis friends to join him. But not before the friends inadvertently revealed Bandit's new address to Jethro who sends two Russian hit men clean up his mess. These sections are more like Laurel and Hardy go look for Larry, Moe, and Curly than Raymond Chandler or Elmore Leonard.

Jethro's telemarketing business is a beard for his very lucrative internet scam which announces that You have WON the Fortune Fate Lottery with a £5,250,00 prize. "The notice was official-looking with lots of numbers, references, and instructions." The instructions were signed by Sir George Bedford in London. To claim the prize, the winner had to send £2,460 to "offset costs of processing your winnings, which include all account openings handling, insurance, transfer, and mailing charges."

So while the Minneapolis cops are investigating the murder, a St. Paul cop begins looking into the internet scam. Simple Witness's short chapters move from Minneapolis to Las Vegas to St. Paul to London and back, and they shift in point of view from Jethro to Bandit to Sean O'Dell, a St. Paul police lieutenant, to Tommy Ling, one of Jethro's minions in London. Because the chapters are short and Siqveland's writing is clear, however, the reader is able to follow all the skulduggery.

I thought Simple Witness was unusually entertaining. I also found Bandit and his two friends unconvincing, but I think it's difficult to write convincingly about characters with limited mental abilities. Finally, Jethro Plack is pure, unmitigated evil, and I think that's always a problem. Aside from ripping off gullible Americans who believe they've won a Fortune Fate Lottery, Plack enjoys causing women pain. He's a sicko and, as such, not that interesting as a character. He and the other bad people deserve what happens to them in the end.

Why you want to check your proof

When I finished the ninth draft of my mystery, Death in a Family Business, and an editor had gone through the manuscript with me I formatted the pages to look as they would appear in the finished book—single-spaced, 11-point type, white space on chapter beginnings—and printed a copy. I took those pages to a Staples store and had the staff print four double-sided, comb-bound copies, which I sent to my beta readers.

Every tab is a query to address.

I wanted my beta-readers to experience a book rather than a manuscript. They found typos, missing words, at least one anachronism (the book is set in 1986 by which time avocado kitchen appliances were passe), redundancies, and a couple continuity problems. (Another reason to format the pages: you need to know how many pages the book will have to allow enough space for the spine.)

I made the changes, uploaded the corrected, formatted file to CreateSpace, and ordered a proof copy. Although CreateSpace recommends authors check the proof online and with a hard copy, I didn't think it was really necessary. My book might have one or two typographical flaws, but after nine drafts and the eyes of four exceptionally assiduous readers what could be left?

A lot. Reading a printed book is a different experience from reading a manuscript or formatted pages in an 8x10 binder. My in-house editor, reading the proof copy, pasted a yellow tab for every correction, question, or suggestion. Missing little words, doubled words, and inconsistencies between the spelling of a name in the beginning of the book and the end. All tiny flaws that many readers will miss, but flaws nonetheless.

I will make the changes, upload the revised (and improved!) pages, and order another proof.

If you self-publish, do you really need an editor?

A month or so ago, one of the people in a LinkedIn group I follow asked, "Why do self-published authors think that they can edit their book themselves?" It provoked (at this writing) over 260 comments. This is a subject about which everyone has an opinion. The reasons people gave for not hiring an editor include:

1. It's too expensive. I.e, "I have lots of time but money is limited. The only way I could justify the expense of an Editor would be if I was making enough to afford their services." "The new increase in my aged pension of $4.40 per fortnight doesn't quite stretch to an Editor's fees." "I resorted to editing my own work after three editors I paid did not do what they had been paid to do. The one editor I would love to use is way out of my league financially."

2. I don't want someone changing my work. I.e, "I want inspire others, so I feel my writing has to be my best, and not my best as tampered with by someone else."

3. I don't need one. I.e., "I pride myself on my editing skills with my own books." "Who is going to care about the book more than its author and who is going to know better what's in the author's head than the author himself?" "Perhaps a professional editor might suggest a few alterations to my work, but no amount of editing could improve the number of stars alongside those stunning [Amazon] reviews.

4. "I don't know how to find one. I.e., "How do you know the person you are going to pay this relatively large sum of money to is any good?
 
5. An editor? What's an editor? There seemed to be considerable confusion over the difference between a developmental editor, a line editor, and a copy editor.

6. And anyway, look at how many commercially-published books are poorly edited.

I believe every author who wants strangers to buy and read her work needs an editor. I have been confident that every manuscript I submitted for editing (or final reading) was clean. I cringed every time the manuscript returned with the editor having marked my typos, missing words, continuity failures, and more. If I did not have an in-house editor, a writer's group, and four exceptionally assiduous early readers, I would find the money to pay a professional to edit my books. I know that, as good as I think I am, if I want strangers to read and enjoy my books, I need an editor.

The second point—someone changing your work—reflects an ignorance of the system. The editor may suggest changes, but the author need not accept them. Certainly self-published author does not have to accept them; that's one reason to self-publish. And a thoughtful reader may see opportunities (or deficiencies) the author is too involved to recognize.

The people making the third point seem to me to be either misguided or delusional. I pride myself on my editing skills too, but I need help.

Finding an editor, whether developmental, line, or copy, can be a challenge, but I think you find one the way you find any good professional: word-of-mouth, internet groups, posting notices on library or college bulletin boards, whatever works. Then, as a number of people in this LinkedIn discussion suggested, you give the candidate a chapter to edit to be sure that you and she agree on style, tone, scope, price, and deadline.

Finally the fact that so many commercially-published books are poorly edited is irrelevant. It's your book, the only one that counts.

The Sketching Detective draws a blank

Jack McCormac's sketching detective series has an interesting framework. The puzzle is based on working out the solution to a logic problem like the following:

"A train is running between Detroit and Chicago with three businessmen on board: Smith, Jones, and Robinson. The train has three crewmen, a brakeman, a fireman, and an engineer. Their names are also Smith, Jones, and Robinson, but we don't know which one is which. From the fo

llowing information, we would like to establish the engineer's name:
1. Mr. Robinson lives in Detroit.
2. The brakeman lives in a town called Midway, which is halfway between Detroit and Chicago.
3. Mr. Jones earns $80,000 per year.  ....etc."

The book's narrator, 32-year-old Jack MacKay, shows how by sketching the facts given it is possible to learn the engineer's name. And apparently in an earlier book (this seems to be the fifth in the series), the narrator so impressed the town's chief of police with his analytical prowess that the chief, Fat Joe, calls on him regularly to help solve cases. Unfortunately that earlier book involved strippers and although Jack had been entirely innocent of hanky-panky, his feisty, red-headed wife Fiona has moved out of their home and is living with her brother.

The mystery involves a neighbor's death. Someone has bashed wealthy Sam Campbell's head in with a golf club, and Fat Joe needs help. In short order, MacKay and Fiona (who, however angry she is with MacKay, is willing to detect with him) have discovered that Sam was wealthy because he used his private detective business for blackmail and has not one but two secret rooms under his house, both of which they find but the police do not.

The Sketching Detective is set somewhere in the south and McCormac fills out the story with information about Scotland, golf, and MacKay's attempts to woo Fiona back into their house. Unfortunately, McCormac's dialogue is unconvincing needed editing. Here is a typical sample as it appears in the book:

"Fiona," I said, "perhaps I was wrong in letting Rhonda sit on my lap. But you must realize that sitting on the laps of as many male customers as possible and kissing them (I made up this last part.) is part of her job a Sakes Alive. Surely you wouldn't leave me just because this one girl sat on my lap at a night club, would you?"

Fiona would, and even though she is presented as a 29-year-old woman I found her immature and irritating. It made me wonder what MacKay saw in her, other than her red hair and enchanting freckles. As it turns out, despite MacKay's sketching and logic, he identifies the wrong person as the murderer. Fortunately Fat Joe, the police chief, does determine the right one—a person Fiona had identified. By the end of the book, the murders are solved (a second murder takes place so far offstage I missed on my first reading) and Fiona and MacKay are talking about children's names: Heather, Fiona, Mora, Angus, Sandy, Fergus.