Reading can be good...

Reading other people's writing can be very illuminating, and assist in your own. I finished Madison Square Murders on the flight home, last night, and while I enjoyed it well enough, I noticed how reticent C S Poe was with his information and storytelling.

I liked how he set up Everett Larkin, the lead detective in the cold case squad, as someone barely in control of himself due to a traumatic even nearly 20 years earlier. It gave him a Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, which is both a blessing and a curse in his profession...and was new to me.

Apparently, individuals with it can remember the day of a week a date fell on as well as details of that happened on hat day, for every day of their life from childhood. But they might also have no short-term memory.

Because of it, he fights to maintain a sharp control of himself and uses tricks to maintain the ability to work with others, to the extent his nickname around the station is Grim.

Of course, slapped up against him is Ira Doyle, a forensic artist for the PD who's as loose and easy as possible in opposition to Larkin, but who's sensitive enough to now how to deal with him and his quirks...almost to the point of saintliness. It's a commonplace arrangement in fiction.

Well, a storm uprooted a tree in Madison Square Park, in mid-town Manhattan, revealing a skeleton wearing a death mask.They pair investigate, find the body was put there 18 years ago, and soon come to suspect they're dealing with a serial killer.

The mystery is laid out neatly. Larkin's issues with his husband's selfish demands seems a bit much but doesn't really detract. I'd have had an easier time believing Larking was on his own, thanks to his mental state. This just seemed like loading on the problems for him to make him more sympathetic. But no big was.

What was a significant issue was how sparse the revelation about the event that brought on the man's HSAM was so minimal as to almost not be there. Even though it's an important part of his makeup. It was tossed aside in just a couple of sentences.

I guess Poe wanted to hold it back for book 2 in the series, but that's a cheat. Spending the whole book building up interest in this aspect of a very damaged man who's just managing to cope, and then not honoring that interest with a full and complete explanation as to what happened, was just plain wrong.

But...it reiterated a problem I'd had in a book or two, myself, and reminded me to take care. You aren't just honoring the characters in your stories, you're acknowledging the needs of your readers.