By episodic, I mean that you can pick up the volumes and read them out of order with little confusion or potential for “spoilers” for ongoing minor characters. The opposite of episodic is a story with character development or action going on (that doesn’t relate to the mystery) that progresses from book to book. Maybe in one book you see a minor character go out on a date, and in book 6 of the series she’s engaged, and in book 9 she’s wed, and book 12 she’s pregnant. Or maybe it’s the main character who goes through those life changing activities.
My question is which do you prefer, or perhaps where on a spectrum ranging from completely independent (but with the same cast of characters) to ongoing saga(that just happens to have independent mysteries in each new volume) your preferred authors fall. Alternately, you can just mention your preferred authors(or the authors you refuse to read more of because of this issue), preferrably with some description of how episodic the series is.
The Spenser novels by Robert Parker are a pretty clear example of a highly episodic series of novels that I very much enjoy. They get a little repetitive if I read too many at once (a character flaw of mine), but I like the feeling that nothing in his world really changes.
The " . . . in Death" books by J.D. Robb have a bit more stuff going on with minor characters, but my irritations with the series have nothing to do with that.
Lately, I’ve been reading Carole Nelson Douglas’s Midnight Louie mystery series and it’s driving me buggy. The individual mysteries are OK, not great with a mostly delightful and sometimes contrived feeling glimpse into life in Vegas. But the amount of secrets that most of the main characters bring with them, and the small amount which is revealed in each book is getting to me. I decided I’d skim some, and skip the mystery–then the next one I picked up featured a mystery which was entwined with one of the characters whose secrets I want to know.
What about you? What mystery series do you like or dislike–preferably due to issues with the pacing of life around the mystery?
I prefer the kind of mystery series that needs to be read in sequence. I enjoy following characters who grow and change, and whose life events are meaningful and formative. I recently finished Stone Angel, the fourth in Carol O’Connell’s “Mallory” series. As I was reading it, I remember having thought that the story was made richer by the complicated history of the major characters; I can imagine that someone who had read none of the earlier books might enjoy Stone Angel, but not as much as someone who had been with the series from its roots.
I like series that should be read in sequence but don’t have to be read that way.
In fact, I’m going to start rereading a series like that soon, Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury novels. They are better read in order, but if you can’t, they are still very enjoyable.
Granted, my favorite author right now is probably Laurie King, and her Mary Russell series would be awful read out of order (I’m guessing). And Elizabeth Peters’s series all need read in order, too.
I don’t read very many episodic series, probably because the characters don’t seem to grow in a natural way.
To use pinkfreud’s example, I just read a later Mallory novel and found it fairly easy to follow but probably less rich than it would have been had I read any of the other books first.
Truthfully, I can’t decide whether the “Midnight Louie” series has too much ongoing development or too little. That may sound odd, it’s kind of hard to explain. I guess I think I’d like each book more if they were either more independent–not so many secrets to explore(though I’d probably have stopped reading by now–possibly to read more later) or if the secrets got explored at greater depth in each book(thus making it more like one of my other favorite categories of books to read- romances).