{"id":1718,"date":"2016-07-07T12:42:05","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T19:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1718"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:30:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:30:59","slug":"review-time-to-murder-and-create","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/07\/review-time-to-murder-and-create\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Time to Murder and Create"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Time<\/a>
\n Time to Murder and Create<\/a> by Lawrence Block<\/a>
\n My rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

When the main character of a novel has things all figured out, but there\u2019s still half of the novel left to go, it\u2019s hard to buy in. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad in any other kind of story, but when it\u2019s a mystery told in first-person, that lack-of-page-count can kind of make it hard to willingly suspend one\u2019s disbelief.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the jaded cynic in all of us who knows better than to accept the first \u201csolution\u201d to come along, even if the main character is willing to accept it. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I like an unreliable narrator, even and especially when that narrator is the main character in the book. But I want that unreliability to stem from good writing, not just from stacking up tropes.<\/p>\n

Truthfully, though, that\u2019s not even my biggest problem with Time to Murder and Create<\/em>. I didn\u2019t like the ending at all. As denouements go, it put heavy emphasis on the \u201canti\u201d in \u201canticlimax.\u201d I call myself jaded and cynical, and certainly I wouldn\u2019t be satisfied by a whiz-bag Hollywood-style ending filled with blood and mayhem. But something more than just, well\u2026 I don\u2019t want to give anything away. I get the impression Block wrote himself into a corner, and decided to go ‘realistic’ (you know, “gritty”) instead of farcical. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, do we really read books like this for the story itself? Or do we devour them for their tone, mood, that aforementioned grit? I guess the latter. This second Matthew Scudder novel\u2019s got all that. And I\u2019ll keep reading them. <\/p>\n

It could be the case I\u2019m judging this book against the better ones he wrote later. And yet, by the time he\u2019d written Time to Murder<\/em>, he\u2019d already written, literally, more than 50 other novels. So it shouldn\u2019t have read like a sophomore effort.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block My rating: 2 of 5 stars When the main character of a novel has things all figured out, but there\u2019s still half of the novel left to go, it\u2019s hard to buy in. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad in any other kind of story, but when … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: Time to Murder and Create”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-rI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}