ABNA reviews

So, my dear readers, here are the three reviews I got during this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition for my novel, The Last Tontine Survivor. I made it to the quarterfinals but was eliminated before the semifinal round.

They are generally good reviews, although I assume the PW review just wasn't strong enough to get me into the semifinal round.

More later.

Thanks for reading and keep writing. I certainly am.

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

I think both the plot and Rachel, the main character, are the strongest aspects of this excerpt. So far, this is a very interesting plot (I haven't seen or heard anything quite like it before) and it has definitely piqued my interest. And I like Rachel - she is a thoughtful friend and a loving niece and granddaughter. She is obviously smart too. Overall, she is very well rounded and fleshed out. Her grandfather seems to be one of those crafty old coots (and I mean that in a totally fun way!) who says one thing ("yes, dear, I'm going to have just a plain, unbuttered bran muffin for breakfast...") and then secretly swipes a donut or two and goes off to eat them in private. I don't know much about him yet, but I think I would end up loving that old man before this story ended.

What aspect needs the most work?

Honestly, I can't really see any area that I think needs work. So far, I like everything about this excerpt. The plot moves along nicely and the characters are well drawn. This excerpt held my interest and actually left me wanting more.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

I loved it. I like Rachel a lot and I have the feeling the grandfather would end up being just as likeable and well drawn as she is. The author put a good amount of detail in the story, not too much and not too little and the plot moves along with good momentum. I enjoyed reading this excerpt and was a little disappointed that it had to end.

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

Fast paced with good action. Rachel is different and likeable. Nice writing.

What aspect needs the most work?

The use of two similar names, Fleishman/Weisman was confusing. Holocaust stories about purloined good and missing fortune and Nazi conspirators running rampant are not terribly original.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

This was an effective excerpt with an unusual heroine. Although the Holocaust/missing fortune/ psycho Nazi spawn lines are tired and tiresome, this one brings a fresh perspective. I would read more.

ABNA Publishers Weekly Reviewer

In a work that admirably adds more layers as it goes along, this novel tracks the troubling murder of Holocaust survivor Howard Fleischman in downtown Indianapolis by a couple of thugs related to (supposedly now deceased) Nazi Gestapo chief Henrich Muller. Uncle Howard and his father, Julius, now 95 and a longtime resident of New York City, were the last surviving members of a German-Jewish financial group whose purpose was “to siphon money out of Gestapo accounts and transfer them to Swiss banking accounts.” With Uncle Howard’s mysterious death, and Grandpa Julius disappeared upstate, his competent, comely 32-year-old granddaughter, antiques attorney Rachel, gets to sort out the perplexing ramifications of this war-time group with help from her problematic boyfriend, Paul, and a drop-dead gorgeous police officer, Ellington Hughes. (His description as “tall and broad-shouldered like LL Cool J, bald and square-jawed like Taye Diggs, had a deep baritone voice like the late actor Michael Duncan, and the smile and totally commanding presence of Denzel Washington” reveals occasional cringing characterizations.) Happily, nothing is quite what it seems in this valiant work, from the youth resistance movement named Edelweis that Julius and others had been members of, to Paul’s secret ties to the Israeli Mossad, to Rachel’s half-black, half-Jewish parentage. It's a little uneven, but promising and surprising enough to keep readers going.

Solid, but not particularly noteworthy

I know I have started this and should finish but today has been particularly busy and I will have to come back to this tomorrow. But for just a moment, I did want to return today to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and, more specifically, my Publishers Week review.

It was a mixed bag but in the end concluded with, "Solid, but not particularly noteworthy."

What am I to make of that?

Yes, I know it is only one person's opinion and they implied that the writing was good, which was nice to know. But the 'note particularly noteworthy' line puzzles me.

In the next couple of days I am going to try to figure that out, and then polish my novel yet again. I don't know what else to do.

When I have time, I will post all my reviews for you, dear reader, to consider. Until then, thanks again for supporting me, thanks for reading and sally forth.

Gender bias

I joined Sisters in Crime several years ago for a variety of reasons and have totally embraced the concept of equality for female writers in the industry, in general, and in the mystery genre, in particular. To me, it isn't a question of limiting men or of limiting men's access in the industry. It is about elevating the access of women.

Put it like this. It isn't just about women getting a bigger piece of the literary pie. It's about caking a bigger pie. Then, everyone benefits. (Not the perfect analogy, I know. It has flaws. But I think you get the point and I want to move on.)

There is an issue I was unaware of before I joined SinC and something the organization has been crusading about for years. It's the issue of gender bias in book reviews. Who is reviewed and why?

SinC's Monitoring Project has for more than two decades tracked mystery book reviews in key publications. And the bottomline is that even in the 21st Century -- yes, the enlightened 21st Century -- male authors tend to get more reviews than women. The Project recently reported that in 22 publications through the third quarter of 2010, only four reviewed more female authors than men.

An article in SinC's December newsletter mentioned a monitoring project conducted by Slate, the online magazine, in which it counted the adult fiction reviews in The New York Times over a two-year period. Its results showed 67 percent of the reviews went to men. And of those getting a double shot, with a review in the daily paper and in the Sunday Book Review, the number shot to 71 percent in favor of men.

(The newsletter also pointed out that only men made Publishers Weekly's Best of 2009 list.)

All of this makes me wonder -- Are there that many more male authors than female authors? I don't know the demographics but I doubt that is the case. Then -- and I can barely believe I'm about to say this -- are men inherently better writers than women? I doubt that, too.

So the only reasonable conclusion is there is a gender bias. But why?

I have worked for a national business news magazine (BusinessWeek), an international wire service (United Press International) and a newspaper (the African-American daily, The Philadelphia Tribune), and have written book reviews for each. And I know that if a publication wanted to review more books by women it is a simple decision to do so. Publications get tons of manuscripts. And it is up to the editors which books are reviewed.

It's obvious, it seems to me, something is wrong here. The question is, will anything be done about it. Since SinC has been fighting this battle for decades, it doesn't seem promising.

But what is promising is that three years ago I was totally unaware this problem existed. I wasn't enlightened. (I don't remember every book I have reviewed but I must sadly admit that probably only a few were by women.) So maybe education is part of the answer. Bringing this issue to light should help in its solution. I can't imagine that in the 21st Century it wouldn't be. And that, as the newsletter pointed out, is "precisely why Sisters in Crime started the Monitoring Project."

Thanks for reading and keep writing.