{"id":2705,"date":"2005-10-05T01:14:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T06:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2705"},"modified":"2017-12-28T11:39:38","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T17:39:38","slug":"book-report-the-night-spider-by-john-lutz-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/05\/book-report-the-night-spider-by-john-lutz-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>The Night Spider<\/i> by John Lutz (2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I inherited <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0786015160\/qid=1128297587\/sr=8-1\/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14\/103-4184449-0145407?v=glance&#038;s=books&#038;n=507846\" target=\"_new\">this book<\/a> from my aunt; she paid fifty cents for it at a yard sale, probably to resell on eBay.  She would have gotten a pretty good deal on a common thriller had she been inclined to read it.  Hey, I liked it well enough.  As some of you know, John Lutz is a St. Louis writer who sets his Thomas Horn novels in New York City.  I thought it would be a fitting read for a St. Louis writer visiting New York City.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Horn has to come back to the force to investigate a serial killer who kills young, attractive, single women in high rise apartments by coming in through their windows.  That&#8217;s the plot, and it&#8217;s a serviceable book.  But I not only read this book for the enjoyment, but also the <i>do nots<\/i> I can apply to my own writing, and I picked up a big set from this book:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do not spend a lot of time, or start the book, with an intimate profile of victims.  Their problems and frustrations will ultimately prove meaningless as they&#8217;re killed imaginatively.  Now, I have a lot of problems and frustrations, and I don&#8217;t need the perspective that they&#8217;re all meaningless because I might be killed imaginatively.  Also, I think the trick wastes space and the reader&#8217;s time.\n<li>Avoid describing characters by saying they look like celebrities.  That&#8217;s a cheap shortcut.  Who cares if the problematic and frustrated by (allegedly) attractive young woman looks like Helen Hunt?  In a couple of pages she&#8217;ll be deader than Helen Hunt&#8217;s career.\n<li>The psycho super Special Forces\/black ops antagonist.  Come on, that&#8217;s been low-hanging fruit since World War I or World War II and accelerated by Viet Nam.  How about a couple psycho super special vegans for once?\n<li>Grafting on a Part II as an afterthought so to involve the rest of a special forces team who murder to cover for the psycho?  Don&#8217;t do it.\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even with those lessons, it&#8217;s a decent enough book.  If you&#8217;re into suspense or St. Louis authors, <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/12\/28\/1806\/\" target=\"_new\">you could do worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I inherited this book from my aunt; she paid fifty cents for it at a yard sale, probably to resell on eBay. She would have gotten a pretty good deal on a common thriller had she been inclined to read it. Hey, I liked it well enough. As some of you know, John Lutz is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2705"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19172,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions\/19172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}