After The Drawing of the Three, I’d say The Dark Tower series. After a certain point, it’s more about the circumstances and the characters. Sure, you want to know if Roland eventually makes it to the tower, but many had known for decades the series wouldn’t finish for years (and which Stephen King finished the last three in a writing sprint).
I’ll toss in Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files, and Garret from the Garret, P.I. series.
Nero Wolfe, definitely.
The central murder mystery was usually the weakest and least compelling part of any Rex Stout story. Indeed, I often suspected that Stout just picked the culprit at random from the suspects, as he came to the end of each book.
I read the stories more for Archie Goodwin’s witty narration and for Stout’s characters than for the stories themselves. I was more interested in what Wolfe was eating and reading than in his cases.
I was going to add rex stout but some people likrf the plots …
**Terry Pratchett. **Who cares about the plot? I just want to spend time with Sam Vimes, Havelock Vetenari and Moist von Lipwig. And Nanny Ogg.
Add another for most series mysteries. Not just the cozies, but the procedurals do this too.
To put a coin in the wayback machine, David Eddings. The Belgariad and The Mallorean are basically the same stories. Either you like the character banter and chuckle along or you think they’re garbage.
someone mentioned the rizolli & isles books … since the tv show is on the last season…So are the books better or worse and still being written ? ?
My cousin said the books that true blood is based on was better than the series but she didn’t read them for the heroine she read then because all the other characters …
Exactly. Execpt that you mean Nobbs and Colon, CMOT Dibbler, and Captain Carrot.
For me, the sequels to Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain are this. The first book was a wonderful send-up of the superhero genre. The two sequels maintain the humour of the original, but the plots don’t measure up at all. The second book consists of Penny arriving at a new location, going into a mad science fugue state for a while, and when she snaps out of it her superpower has created more problems for her, so she has to go elsewhere to try and fix it. The result is that she has no real agency for much of the story. She just gets dragged from place to place by her superpower.
The third book … well, I’m tempted to say that it has no real plot. There’s no conflict that spans the whole book. Sure, individual chapters have some conflict or another, but they’re for the most part resolved quite quickly, and there’s no overarching plot thread or theme to tie everything together. The result is that it feels less like a novel and more like a series of disconnected scenes.
I will respectfully disagree with you, at least as far as the Dresden Files. Each novel seems to flow from and build upon the last. Harry’s cases don’t disappear into the past; they influence what happens in the future, as well. In fact, Harry explictly says that, talking about all the weird shit that’s happened in the last few years - it’s one of the things that leads him to suspect the existence of the Black Council. Character development is still paramount, but I think the plots all lead up to the climax of Changes: The assault on Chichen Itza, the destruction of the Red Court, and the defeat (maybe) of the Black Council. .
That arc seems to have come to an end after Ghost Story, but I bet Jim Butcher’s working up another one around Harry becoming the Winter Knight.
Now, the short stories in Side Jobs or Working for Bigfoot, those I agree are less about the plots and more enjoying the characters.
Just my $0.02.
Do the novels of Charles Dickens count, considering he originally published them in installments? If so, I nominate every Charles Dickens novel I’ve ever read.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The earlier stories are brilliant, but, alas, the later stories are weak beer, and only the irrepressible spirits of the main characters make them worth reading. (And Fafhrd, by the end, has been terribly diluted from his earlier zest. The Mouser remains the same self-centered lust-budget, ever true to himself.)
Today’s X-Men comic books are only kept alive by a handful of really strong personalities among the cast. If it weren’t for Storm, Hank McCoy, and the more energetic of the youngsters, such as Rockslide, Anole, and the guy who’s a big pink blob of transparent flesh with a skeleton inside – Ah! Glob Herman! – and maybe Magik – who isn’t getting the prime-time exposure she deserves – the X-Men comics would be desperately dull. Sometimes, I think Storm is carrying the entire franchise on her shoulders.