Tag Archives: suspense

TV Tuesday: Person of Interest–and books of interest

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Each week, we’ll spotlight a current television show that we love, and the books that you just might like. Here are this week’s reading suggestions based on…

Person of Interest:

This show stands out for having an incredibly silly premise with a mind-blowingly fun execution. Reese (Jim Caviezel) is a modern-day Batman running around New York City battling crime bosses, saving lives, dodging his ex-CIA handlers, and hiding from the police. Oh and he stops cars full of bad guys with his rocket launcher.

In the meantime, his paranoid genius sidekick and tech support, Finch (Michael Emerson), uses a supercomputer to come up with the names of the people who are going to be killed in the next few days. It’s Reese’s job to stop that from happening.

And if Reese just happens to end up shooting a bunch of bad guys in the process, well, looks like the job has perks.

In books too, I have it bad for badass killer characters with traumatic pasts. Ever since Salvatore’s Drizzt D’Urden and Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, I’ve been infatuated with smart-talking, quick-thinking, fast-stabbing characters like Reese. There aren’t a lot of well-written badasses out there, so in my reading habits, I often default to other storylines to get my fix.

Here are a few character-driven book suggestions involving some seriously awesome protagonists:

Continue reading →

[ Pitch Slapped ] When the Going Gets Rough…

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…the Readers Start Running.

Birthright by RJ Palmer is a paranormal mystery and suspense novel. The problem? The blurb slams the reader with more than the allotted amount of mysterious; I quite literally had no idea what was going on in the book’s pitch.

For this pitch, I’d say it’s a case of not actually knowing what the story is about, and that’s surprisingly common ailment among authors. It’s hard for writers to condense their darling into just a few, bare sentences. When you are so close to your story, it isn’t easy to step back and talk about the main thrust of the narrative. So, let’s try to parse the blurb down into a tantalizing pitch.

 The original pitch: Continue reading →