Good Publisher's Weekly Review -- But They Didn't Quite GET The Whole Idea
From Publishers Weekly:
Not many thrillers end with a bibliography of several dozen actual nonfiction books, but Perdue's prodigious and intriguing new novel (after 2004's Slatewiper) has one—plus appendixes that are probably fiction because they include quotes from the novel's star players.
"Dr. Bradford Stone, 'legendary Marine recon operative turned healer and scientist,' makes it his business to find out who's behind a massive secret plan to turn the drug Xantaeus loose on a reduced but much more effective army in places like Iraq — especially after the love of his life, a black activist in the Mississippi Delta country, is killed by a female sniper involved in the conspiracy.
"Stone and the murdered activist's daughter are credible characters; the plot's premise stands up to scrutiny; and Perdue brings the Delta geography to vivid life. Even though the writing occasionally slips into some awkward phrasing ("Gabriel had paid scant attention and given no real thought to those critics, preferring to believe the day of the nondepleting neurotrop would never come"), this is an exciting novel." -- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for good reviews. And I'll admit that this is a very complicated novel, what with a Southern novel wrapped up in a thriller, a LOT of fact wrapped inside the fiction, a highly autobiographical hero, threads about the biological origins of consciousness, and a set of characters all looking for redemption through the exercise of free will ... which ties back to the consciousness issue.
I needed to wait for my Mother to die before I could write this book about my native Mississippi Delta ... the book says unkind things about the plantation culture she was born into ... and tries to grapple with the WHY of racism, and HOW people acted the way they did ... and to do this without the usual quick and trite excuses, demonization.
Yeah, and this is all wrapped up in the thriller part -- a fiction-based-on-fact account of a secret military program (verified as fact) to develop a drug that can turn the average soldier into the equivalent of special forces.
As a book reviewer myself (for Barron's) I understand the time demands the PW reviewer faced ... and reviewers as a whole for that matter. That's why I started this blog ... in hopes that I can elaborate more on the different parts of Perfect Killer and how they all fit together into a novel that's very different from anything I have ever written before.
Not many thrillers end with a bibliography of several dozen actual nonfiction books, but Perdue's prodigious and intriguing new novel (after 2004's Slatewiper) has one—plus appendixes that are probably fiction because they include quotes from the novel's star players.
"Dr. Bradford Stone, 'legendary Marine recon operative turned healer and scientist,' makes it his business to find out who's behind a massive secret plan to turn the drug Xantaeus loose on a reduced but much more effective army in places like Iraq — especially after the love of his life, a black activist in the Mississippi Delta country, is killed by a female sniper involved in the conspiracy.
"Stone and the murdered activist's daughter are credible characters; the plot's premise stands up to scrutiny; and Perdue brings the Delta geography to vivid life. Even though the writing occasionally slips into some awkward phrasing ("Gabriel had paid scant attention and given no real thought to those critics, preferring to believe the day of the nondepleting neurotrop would never come"), this is an exciting novel." -- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for good reviews. And I'll admit that this is a very complicated novel, what with a Southern novel wrapped up in a thriller, a LOT of fact wrapped inside the fiction, a highly autobiographical hero, threads about the biological origins of consciousness, and a set of characters all looking for redemption through the exercise of free will ... which ties back to the consciousness issue.
I needed to wait for my Mother to die before I could write this book about my native Mississippi Delta ... the book says unkind things about the plantation culture she was born into ... and tries to grapple with the WHY of racism, and HOW people acted the way they did ... and to do this without the usual quick and trite excuses, demonization.
Yeah, and this is all wrapped up in the thriller part -- a fiction-based-on-fact account of a secret military program (verified as fact) to develop a drug that can turn the average soldier into the equivalent of special forces.
As a book reviewer myself (for Barron's) I understand the time demands the PW reviewer faced ... and reviewers as a whole for that matter. That's why I started this blog ... in hopes that I can elaborate more on the different parts of Perfect Killer and how they all fit together into a novel that's very different from anything I have ever written before.
posted by Lewis Perdue at 7:20 AM
2 Comments:
Don't give the readers too much discussion on what you intended.
I've always been taught that if readers don't see everything you wanted your book to be, that maybe you didn't present it well enough for them TO see it.
Also, telling too much may take away the excitement of delving into an intricate story for the reader.
Really good points ... and things I have debated.
I decided to put up more stuff for right now because it was obvious that book reviewers were scanning the book and NOT reading the whole thing ... I don't know if this will help anything, but one can hope.
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