| As the creator or producer of several hit TV shows, such as "The A-Team," "The Rockford Files," and "The Commish," Stephen J. Cannell knows well the value of suspense, and keeping an audience guessing. He now uses those skills in his mystery novels, like Cold Hit, in which a serial killer is on the loose. Cannell plays us masterfully, in keeping the identity of the killer secret until the very last minute.
Length - 5:31 >> Go to the Stephen J. Cannell spoiler |
|
| An author creates a series character, and imbues that character with certain personality traits -- and physical characteristics -- and then builds the stories with those traits and characteristics as his framework. But characters also evolve over time, and those qualities that have defined them can also change. Jeffery Deaver's main character in his popular series of police procedurals is a quadriplegic detective named Lincoln Rhyme. An accident while on the job left him unable to move anything but one finger.
Length - 5:42 >> Go to the Jeffery Deaver spoiler |
|
| The narrator of Eric Jerome Dickey's novel Genevieve is frustrated in his attempts to get to really know who his wife Genevieve is. There just seems to be a big chunk of her life she doesn't want to let him into. And things haven't been going so well in the bedroom lately, either, and he starts an affair with another woman -- his wife's sister. But as we ultimately find out, even that relationship is shrouded in a mystery -- and the truth is explosive.
Length - 7:56 >> Go to the Eric Jerome Dickey spoiler |
|
| Elizabeth George has known for some time that she was eventually going to kill a character in her popular Thomas Lynley-Barbara Havers series of mysteries. But when she finally does so, in With No One As Witness, it's a death that stunned her fans.
Length - 8:32 >> Go to the Elizabeth George spoiler |
|
| When it's time to end a popular series, an author has many options, ranging from the whimsical to the unthinkable. Once he had committed himself to run for governor of Texas, Kinky Friedman needed to end his mystery series after nearly 20 years. So, did he go for whimsical? Or unthinkable?
Length - 4:04 >> Go to the Kinky Friedman spoiler |
|
| There's a very good reason why the middle-aged heroine of the John Jaffe romance Shenandoah Summer doesn't want to leave the farm she owns. That reason is hinted at, throughout the book, but only revealed near the end.
Length - 4:32 >> Go to the John Jaffe spoiler |
|
| Nothing happens for no reason, figures novelist Karin Slaughter. There is an explanation that is often rooted in something quite concrete, and crime often revolves around greed, or jealousy, or revenge. And in her thriller Indelible events from the past may be linked to a brutal crime in the present day.
Length - 6:29 >> Go to the Karin Slaughter spoiler |
|
| Good, upstanding furrier Mark Rubin can't understand why his wife has disappeared, and taken their children with her, at the outset of Laura Lippman's mystery By a Spider's Thread. But by the end of this book, all the events will make some kind of sinister sense. And that's exactly what Lippman had in mind.
Length - 5:06 >> Go to the Laura Lippman spoiler |
|
| Environmental disaster looms large in Kim Stanley Robinson's scientific thriller Forty Signs of Rain, and to make the story work, of course, Robinson has to deliver the goods -- a natural disaster.
Length - 4:32 >> Go to the Kim Stanley Robinson spoiler |
|
| In her mystery Popped, Carol Higgins Clark sets up a competition between two groups of TV people, each vying for a single available programming slot on a new cable TV network. But the twist she uses at the end of the book is worthy of a TV show itself.
Length - 2:56 >> Go to the Carol Higgins Clark spoiler |
|
| There is a smorgasbord of suspects in the Mary Higgins Clark suspense thriller Nighttime Is My Time, in which a serial killer -- who calls himself "The Owl" -- is systematically eliminating certain members of a high school class about to gather for their 20-year reunion. Clark, of course, knew perfectly well all along who The Owl was.
Length - 5:22 >> Go to the Mary Higgins Clark spoiler |
|
| Terry McCaleb is dead, at the opening of Michael Connelly's book The Narrows, and his widow has asked the now-freelance Harry Bosch to investigate, because the death sure looks suspicious. Especially when The Poet resurfaces after an eight-year absence.
Length - 3:55 >> Go to the Michael Connelly spoiler |
|
| With a book like My Sister's Keeper author Jodi Picoult knew from day one that there could be no "happy ending." It's almost inevitable that someone is going to die, and as we get further and further into the book, we are more and more convinced we know who it's going to be. And that may be exactly what Picoult wanted us to think.
Length - 5:40 >> Go to the Jodi Picoult spoiler |
|
| Ian Rankin's bestseller A Question of Blood is not a whodunit -- we know whodunit. Or we think we do, for almost the entire book -- until we find out our assumption was wrong. Rankin startles us with an ending that is as chilling as it is logical.
Length - 5:30 >> Go to the Ian Rankin spoiler |
|
| Historical fiction usually attempts to remain loyal to history, but if that history is murky, the writer is free to offer any plausible explanation. Take, for example, the mystery of what actually happened to renowned playwright -- and queen's spy -- Christopher Marlowe, purportedly stabbed to death for reasons never explained. Leslie Silbert offers a delicious alternative explanation.
Length - 3:05 >> Go to the Leslie Silbert spoiler |
|
| A good thriller should deliver a punch at the end, something that gives the story real impact. A great thriller will deliver a body blow, something that knocks the air out of us. And then, every once in a while, along comes a thriller that can do that twice, and not just at the end. Brad Meltzer talked with Eye on Books about the "The Zero Game."
Length - 7:29 >> Go to the Brad Meltzer spoiler |
|
| A presidential candidate is murdered, and another -- 8 years later -- is kidnapped, in David Baldacci's thriller Split Second. But as we eventually learn, the same sinister force is behind both incidents. And it's because of his love for a woman he knows he cannot have.
Length - 5:50 >> Go to the David Baldacci spoiler |
|
| Something's very wrong in John J. Nance's thriller "Fire Flight" -- planes being used to fight raging forest fires are falling apart in the air. That's the kind of thing you'd expect if a plane had logged many more hours of flying than the official records indicated.
Length - 4:04 >> Go to the John J. Nance spoiler |
|
| The meat of Homer Hickam's novel "The Keeper's Son" takes place in the early months of World War Two. But the coda to the story brings us into the present day, where we are led to believe a now elderly Dosie has found the answer to the book's central question....
Length - 4:29 >> Go to the Homer Hickam spoiler |
|
| P.D. James is one of the world's finest mystery writers, and has been for many years. But she sure knows how to tug at a reader's heartstrings when the time comes, as she does at the close of her mystery "The Murder Room," a book which features the blossoming romance between Adam Dahlgleish and his sweetheart Emma.
Length - 3:25 >> Go to the P.D. James spoiler |
|
| Any book that keeps its readers flipping the pages can't afford a letdown ending. And no one has ever accused Stephen Hunter of letting them down at the end, not least at the end of his thriller set in pre-revolutionary Cuba, called "Havana."
Length - 4:39 >> Go to the Stephen Hunter spoiler |
|
| Few books have nice, neat endings that wrap everything up and answer all the questions. And when you're writing about matters of faith, the chances are even slimmer that an ending will be clearly in focus. David Guterson's novel "Our Lady of the Forest" deals with a young woman who claims she has seen the Virgin Mary. But by the end of the book, Guterson has left us room to make up our own minds.
Length - 3:40 >> Go to the David Guterson spoiler |
|
| In TV's "Perry Mason," the witness stand was frequently the place where someone would blurt out some extremely damaging piece of testimony that would invariably serve to clear Mason's client. Now, in real courtroom trials, that almost never happens. But depositions .... well, that can be a different story. In Richard North Patterson's political thriller "Balance of Power," we know President Kerry Kilcannon has won his long and bitter battle with the gun lobby, after a meltdown during the deposition of a high-ranking gun company executive.
Length - 3:15 >> Go to the Richard North Patterson spoiler |
|
| When an old man who thinks his life has been a big waste dies suddenly and accidentally, he is shown a kind of heaven unlike any he'd anticipated, in Mitch Albom's novel "The Five People You Meet in Heaven." When he started the book, Albom says, he only knew two or three of the five people -- but one of those he knew for sure was the fifth, a little girl named Tala.
Length - 4:09 >> Go to the Mitch Albom spoiler |
|
| Patricia Cornwell's immensely popular heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta has been forced, in the last few books, to deal with the grisly death of her lover Benton Wesley. But guess what? As is revealed in "Blow Fly," Wesley wasn't dead, after all. His death was staged. And Marino and Lucy knew about it. Scarpetta doesn't find out until the final pages of the book.
Length - 4:09 >> Go to the Patricia Cornwell spoiler |
|
|
Writers, students and teachers, please send us your comments on whether you find The Spoiler Room useful in your work.
|
|
