Mystery Girl, by David Gordon

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I loved the first part of David Gordon's The Serialist, but it switched tones in the middle and I ended up not liking it. I thought perhaps Gordon's inexperience building a consistent plot and theme was just a rookie mistake that he corrected with Mystery Girl. Boy, was I wrong. Gordon seems to be opposed to structured plots, on principle. The protagonist of Mystery Girl is a frustrated writer who likes to write dark, stream-of-consciousness, soul-searching novels with no plot and that nobody reads. Unfortunately, this seems to be a description of Gordon's ideal. He ends up writing a mongrel mixture of a commercial mystery with a "literary" modern novel, and he ends up satisfying neither audience.

Mystery Girl has action and mystery, but it isn't structured in a way that makes us care. The protagonist doesn't know what he wants, and as a result the reader doesn't care what happens to him. There's lots of scheming by minor characters and more than a few plot twists, but we just don't care enough to follow all of them and instead we end up focusing on the implausibility of the schemes.

Gordon has excellent style, but little else, and its a shame.

Wayward, by Blake Crouch

As soon as I finished Pines, I immediately downloaded the next book in the series, Wayward. The Kindle makes it too easy, and I borrowed both for free with my Prime account (Crouch still gets some money for borrowed books.) The big secret revealed at the end of Pines was excellent and I wanted to see what happened next to the characters I'd been following. After such a great reveal at the end of Pines, it isn't surprising that Wayward wasn't able to match the surprise. However, there is still a mystery to solve in Wayward which makes the book stand on its own in the trilogy: Why was the Founder's daughter killed?

While just as well written as Pines, I wasn't as satisfied with Wayward because the payoff at the end wasn't as big. However, since this book is in the middle, it needs to set up a big finish for the third novel, and it did this well. The last book in the trilogy, The Last Town, isn't out yet, but I plan to read it soon after it is released so see what finally happens to these characters I've come to love.

Pines, by Blake Crouch

I really enjoyed Crouch's Run so I was looking forward to another exciting thriller from the author, Pines, and he did not disappoint. While not as dark or scary as Run, Pines was very entertaining and mysterious.

I didn't realize it when I started, but Pines is the first book in a trilogy (the others are Wayward and The Last Town). Even though this is just one third of the whole story, the book has a good structure and is self-contained. That's one thing I like about Crouch--he gets the four-part structure that makes novels entertaining. He also gets concept, which for Pines is: What if a special agent woke up in a strange mountain town after a car accident and couldn't contact the outside world? The secret of the town, Wayward Pines, is slowly revealed throughout the book until the big secret is revealed at the end.

The only part I didn't like was how the town would have murderous search parties to find a traitor where they all dress up in weird Halloween-type costumes. It wasn't believable that so many people would go along with such a bizarre spectacle. But this wasn't a key part of the novel and it didn't ruin a great story executed almost perfectly.

The Deep Blue Goodbye, by John D. MacDonald

I read this book after I learned that Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe is a fan of the Travis McGee series. Written in 1964, it has a lot of psychobabble that was popular at the time but is distracting today. The main women in the story also acted like helpless victims, which I suppose was normal for that time period, but also seemed out of place in today's culture.

Besides these aspects not standing the test of time, the book was well written with a decent plot. But it wasn't as good as Robert B. Parker, who is my favorite author in this type of hard-boiled detective genre.

I probably won't read another Travis McGee novel, but I may try The End of the Night, which Stephen King mentioned as a great American tragedy. Or I might try The Executioners, on which the movie Cape Fear was based.