There are a few I’ve consciously stopped reading. For some others, it’s not so much a conscious decision as a growing disinterest and sooner or later I stop “noticing” when they’ve published a new book.
Those I’ve deliberately crossed off my list:
Patricia Cornwell. Pretty much for the reasons described above. Plus she kept doing screwy things with time. The niece grows up at soap opera pace; no one else seemed to get any older.
Martha Grimes. I got tired with the fact that her characters never changed. Oddly, at the time that I stopped reading them, it also seemed that, though time went by and decades moved on, Richard Jury never got any older.
It bothers me if a book is supposed to be one where suspension of belief is not required, then playing around with time like that is annoying.
Sharyn McCrumb. I really liked her Elizabeth McPherson books of the early 90’s. * Missing Susan* was a fine black comedy. Damn that Susan for keeping missing being murdered! Then Sharyn McCrumb took a turn into very serious writing. Blah, blah, blech. That was it for me.
Patricia Cornwell hasn’t been good since her third book. I have finally crossed her off the list with this new one, Trace. I liked her so much in the beginning that I hung on for a long time, hoping she’d return to old form.
Sue Grafton is really uneven, I think. A, B, E, G, H, J, L, N, and O were quite enjoyable. The others were really pretty boring/formulaic. I hear good things about the new one, S.
[spoiler] I cannot believe she killed Helen off! Then again, what was she to do–have the Ashertons be one happy family? The baby kind of jumped the shark.
but why o why didn’t she kill off Deborah? SHE is the one who does nothing–I liked Helen just because she was such a butterfly, but knew it and was actually a solid person underneath. [/spoiler]
And EG needs a more brutal editor–this book could have been about 100 pages shorter and much better. :rolleyes:
I’m bumping this thread as a public service, just in case the OP is wavering in her resolve. Ruth Rendell has a new novel, The Water is Lovely and it, too, roundly bites.
Ruth Rendell’s books are still good, but I find her characters just so hideous and unsympathetic, I can’t read them. I still like her Inspector Wexford books–he’s an awesome character. And her detective mysteries are great. And I still enjoy Rendell’s older books.
No, it’s not a Wexford book, and I completely agree. Her last few books that don’t feature Wexford are well written, but her characters are so casually brutal and repellent that they are almost painful to read.
Oddly, the books she writes under the Barbara Vine pseudonym always seem to be much more fun.
Apparently the new Wexford is called Not in the Flesh and it’s coming out sometime soon.
I agree–the Barbara Vine ones are best. Somehow, they’re darker and more fun to read than the ones that come out under her own name. No Night is Too Long, Grasshopper, Anna’s Book, A Dark Adapted Eye, Fatal Inversion.
I’m a Capricorn – I don’t waver. (And I’ve included the Wexford books in my boycott.)
BTW, speaking of beach reading – I’ll post in that thread eventually – but this year’s tote bag o’ books included the new Jonathan Kellerman, which was, as I told you in that email, “thoroughly adequate.” Esp. for a beach read.
I used to love Robin Cook’s medical thrillers, but the last couple of them have been awful, awful, awful. I have his latest one on hold at the library, and I’m going to give it a shot. If there is no improvement, that’s it for him!