Novels mentioned in Passing but not recommended: DeadBeat, The Somnambulist, The end of Mr Y
I had high hopes for all these books. But sadly none of them worked out for me – lucky old charity shop.
Dead Beat by Jim Butcher forms part of the "Dresden Files" cannon – a splendid TV show if you ignore the Pilot episode. For the longest time reading the novel I thought I might even finish it. I kind of enjoyed it, but kind of not, and then after one too many deus ex machina I dropped out. It held my interest well enough while I lasted with it, but ultimately I didn’t care enough for it to retain that hold.
The Somnambulist sounded great – Victorian conjuror detective, magic, murder. But pretty early on it became a Yawn that never really engaged with me.
The End of Mr Y, received some pretty high praise from the literati recently and nominated for the Orange Broadband 2008 prize. Again I thought this would work for me – who doesn’t love finding old books mispriced in a 2nd hand bookshop – "Yes I’ll have that first edition of Burroughs’ Junkie for 50p please". And yet as soon as I started reading the book in the book I disengaged entirely.
All of these novels have at least one thing in common – the first person narrative. Which never used to present a problem for me. I used to read first person narrative books, but they seem so hard to get right and I guess you either bond with the narrator or want to kick them down the stairs. Only Dresden didn’t get kicked down the stairs but eventually I wandered off and left Dresden to fight his battles on his own.
They might well work for you, I simply offer you my warning.