2013 Newbery Winners

[osprey_archer]

I must confess I was flagging on the Newbery project, but then I read Laura Amy Schlitz’s Splendors and Glooms and now my enthusiasm has REVIVED, because this is a novel about Victorian London! and dark magic! and puppets! and humans who get turned into puppets through dark magic! and sad plucky children and atmospheric snowfalls and a heroine named Clara Wintermute, which is a name that ought to be too on the nose to be allowed, but if you are setting a book in the London of Charles Dickens then the names can be as on the nose as you want.

I also very much enjoyed the other 2013 Honor book, Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, which is a nonfiction book about America’s race to build the atomic bomb during World War II and about the Soviet Union’s race to steal the technology. As you may imagine, this was catnip for me. I knew the rough lineaments of the story already, but I loved getting more pieces filled in

I found the parts about the FBI investigation into the spying particularly stimulating. The FBI knew that Harry Gold had acted as a courier - but this knowledge came from encoded intercepts, and they didn’t want the USSR to know that they had cracked the code, so they got him to confess basically by letting Gold know that they knew (and by gathering bits of circumstantial evidence to bolster their case) until his nerve cracked and he confessed.

It has occurred to me that I could use a similar method in Honeytrap: I could cut short the whodunnit part and focus instead on the ‘how will they get him to confess’ part. A lot of my problems with the revision arises from the fact that I feel like whodunnit is obvious and the readers will guess immediately, and there’s nothing more tiresome than reading a mystery where you know whodunnit long before the detectives, even if it’s a story like Honeytrap that is really more romance with a dash of mystery because if you’re going to tell a story about enemy agents forced to work together they have to work on SOMETHING.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I like your proposed solution (and the book you read sounds fascinating).

I had a similar problem with the whodunit aspect of my current story seeming obvious. I realized that that wasn't really at the heart of the story, and that helped me a good deal (hence what I said to you earlier), but you're right! You still don't want people saying, "Okay but it's this, right? This is what it is," and then being impatient when you don't confirm that.

[osprey_archer]

I do love a good spy story! The real ones are so much more mundane but also more interesting than fiction: so many tiny heart-stopping moments where everything hangs in the balance, so much more bumbling than you might expect.

And yes! It's so frustrating as a reader to figure out the twist, and the characters don't know it yet, and the longer they continue not knowing it the more stupid they look. "Dumb as a box of rocks" is rarely a good look for the heroes.

[marycatelli]

Ah, yes, Splendours and Glooms!

Good book.

(Actually I like A Drowned Maiden's Hair better, but SnG is still good.)

[littlerhymes]

humans who get turned into puppets through dark magic! and sad plucky children and atmospheric snowfalls and a heroine named Clara Wintermute

OK this sounds amazing

Hmm, that is an interesting approach to the problem of Honeytrap! Still a good way to ramp up tension without it resting on the reveal.

[osprey_archer]

If people getting turned into puppets is a thing that you like, then this book is calling out your name.

I'm not sure if this potential Honeytrap approach but I'm willing to try anything at this point. We'll see how it goes!