Killing the Shadows (Val McDermid) Chapters 15-29

Okay, now the book is beginning to drag just a little.  Not badly; the page-to-page writing is still engaging enough, though the author might be over-estimating the degree to which we have identified with the characters.  The problem is a very old one; in an effort to give the readers a lot of book for their money, we’ve crammed a 400-hundred-pager into 600 pages.  During the 17^th and 18^th centuries, this was appreciated and considered a smart marketing move; people didn’t buy many books back then and the market wasn’t saturated with new best-selling novels every twenty minutes.  Today, however, especially to a somewhat “plodding” reader like me, it almost feels like an imposition to stretch a book beyond its best natural length.

Sub-plots are a good way to justify “filler” in a novel like this, and the different cases that are occupying Fiona’s mind – besides the main mystery of the killing of crime thriller novelists – serve an extra function of showing just what Fiona, with her modern forensic techniques, is capable of.  But it is all too easy to over-do the sub-plot action, causing some of us to get impatient with the constant side-tracking.  The occasional diary-like entries written by the killer that we get a peek at from time to time are kept short and sweet, and they add a lot without distracting from the main story-line.  The constant re-hashing of references to the Francis Blake/Susan Blanchard case, however, is wearing thin if it doesn’t eventually link in to the rest of the plot.

The author is portraying Fiona as a tough-minded, logic-guided, no-nonsense kind of crime specialist while, at the same time attempting to show how this same individual can be misled by her feelings when her husband is involved in the case.  Fiona originally brought up the idea that the killer might be focusing on writers, and then, when Kit starts to get worried, she seems to want to do everything she can to rationalize it away.  This portrayal of how our humanity is a weakness even in our heroes and heroines is admirable, but here it is emphasized to the point that Fiona actually loses just a little of the reader’s respect – not what an author normally intends to accomplish.

The relationships between Fiona, Kit and Steve are an interesting mix.  Steve and Fiona were an item before Kit entered the picture, and now that Kit and Fiona are married, Steve is not only still Fiona’s very good friend, but one of Kit’s as well.  Isn’t it nice that we’re all such well-balanced adults that we can rise above the feelings of the past this way?  Well, yes, but how often does this happen in real life.  These three even joke about it a little.  In a discussion of Steve’s current love life Fiona points out the main issue;  “ ’The trouble with the three of us is that in our own ways we all have a morbid fascination with violent death.’ Fiona said.  ‘Maybe Kit should fix you up with a sexy crime writer.’  Kit spluttered.  ‘Easier said than done.  When you cross off the ones who are already attached, the ones who have a serious interest in recreational drugs and the dykes, there’s not a lot left over.’ ”

This reference to “dykes” is particularly interesting because our author, Val McDermid, is frequently referred to as a “lesbian crime writer” herself.  For her to portray Kit using the (derogatory?) term “dyke” is intriguing – Ms. McDermid certainly knows the field of such writers in Great Britain, and is probably on a first-name basis with most of them, so she is apparently revealing a real fact here.  Like they say, “Write about what you know.”  That is certainly happening in this novel!

Next Week:  Chapters 30-43
Week 4:  Chapters 44-Epilogue