Book report - K is for killer
What I will touch upon here is just my personal reading experience.
I have been exposed to suspense mystery novels since middle school. At that time, I mainly read novels by Japanese writers such as Keigo Higashino and the well-known “Charlotte Holmes” series. The image of the detective in my mind has always been that of a calm and intelligent one (if there is one) Windbreakers and hats are even more stereotypical.
The book "K is for killer" is written by New York Times #1 bestselling author Sue Grafton. When I saw the title of the book, I had no idea that this would be the eleventh book in a series. This author has a series of letters, that is, from A to Z (actually only Y), and each letter is written separately. a book. This was a surprise for me, and it means that if I am satisfied with this book, I will have 24 similar books waiting for me after reading it. In addition to this series, Sue Grafton has also written other works such as "Keziah Dane" (1967) and "The Lolly-Madonna War" (1969).
It was a coincidence that I encountered this book. I discovered it at the ninth-grade booth at last year's International Festival. It was placed alongside Derek Landy's "Skulduggery Pleasant", Audrey Howard's "Distant Images" and a Spanish book. I bought all the books and a free little crocodile doll for less than five hundred yen. It was the happiest shopping experience of my life.
Talking about this book, when I first read it, I thought it would be a very classic story, the detective and the client, the dead and the incompetent police. The author's calm and clever setting of the detective is very much to my liking. At the same time, this is by no means a character with a simple background. However, every character in this book is complex, which is very important for mystery detective novels.
The detective starts the investigation from the client's information and gets to know the deceased's friends, landlord, doctors, and even the police step by step. The progress in the first few chapters is relatively slow, but some foreshadowings can push the readers to read on.
Yes, for me, this rhythm is comfortable. The author's writing style is exquisite and delicate. This is a matter of opinion, and some may not like the idea of describing a man and his dog in a few pages but at least I read it quite smoothly, and I think this can make the characters more vivid than just the protagonist. I think this book has done an excellent job but the problem with slow pace is that it is difficult to arouse readers' interest, and they will forget what happened before. I somewhat agree with this point of view. Different people have different reasons for reading. Most of my reading time is during school breaks, which is relatively scattered, so some slow narrative problems will become more and more obvious. First of all, I encountered the problem of forgetting the characters that appeared before, and secondly, even if I tried my best to read one chapter at a time, I still had to interrupt my reading from time to time, which was terrifying. I usually need to read it again from the beginning of the next chapter, and I'm glad this doesn't happen too many times. If you have enough time, such as a day or two to read from beginning to end, this will be a valuable reading experience.
