Styling the Thriller

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

In his “Introduction” to the 2006 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, James Patterson, playing the role of editor, reminds readers that the varieties of thrillers is deep and wide, including “the legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, and military thriller, but they have “common ground” in “the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness.” In short, a thriller must thrill (iii).

James Patterson

Thrillers are also fast-paced, Patterson says, and their protagonists achieve “an objective . . . at some heroic cost. The main character's “goal can be personal (trying to save a spouse or a long-lost relative) or global (trying to avert a world war) but often it's both.” There may be a ticking clock (iii). A thriller, he maintains, may “build rhythmically to rousing climaxes that peak with a cathartic, explosive ending,” or a thriller may “start at top speed and never let off” (iii). Thrillers tend to be well-researched and to use “accurate details.” At the end, readers “should feel emotionally satisfied and better informed” (iii).

The collection includes thirty short stories by thirty-three well-known writers, among them Lee Child, James Rollins, David Morrell, John Lescroart, Eric Van Lustbader, F. Paul Wilson, Brad Thor, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. In many of the tales, well-known protagonists make another appearance: Jack Reacher (“James Penney's New Identity”), Joe Kowalski (“Kowalski's in Love”), Repairman Jack (“Interlude at Duane's”), Nick Neumann (“Assassins”), NYPD's Detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta (“The Fisherman”).

Often, the situations on which a thriller is built is as at least as interesting as the story's protagonist and villain, and those in Thriller are, generally, intriguing, even if they are familiar, in large part because of the way their authors handle them. The stories are based on such situations as “an explosion at the U. S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay” (34), street gangs (53), an unexpected storm (68), an empath (89), the setting of a trap for a dangerous former FBI profiler (178), prison life (259), Balkans intrigue (292), a road trip (342), and the theft of an Inca sacrificial knife (542). Most are close to twenty pages in length.

“James Penney's New Identity”

In Lee Child's story, “James Penney's New Identity,” the divorced protagonist is fired from the factory job at which he's worked for seventeen years, because of downsizing. Unable to pay for his new Firebird, Penney burns down his house. The fire also destroys the homes of two of his neighbors. With six weeks' pay in his pocket, from his last check, Penney leaves town. After spending the night in a cheap hotel, he wakes to find that his Firebird has been stolen. He goes to the local police station to report the theft, but sees a wanted poster with his photograph on it; he's wanted for arson and criminal damage. He flees, and, wen a driver offers him a ride, he accepts.

The driver, Jack Reacher, is a military police officer who has false identification documents, which he seized from Edward Hendricks, an Army liaison officer he'd arrested. He lets Penney have a set of the documents, handcuffs him, and, Penney posing as his prisoner, are passed through a police roadblock after the authorities check their identification and record their names.

The men separate, and Reacher disposes of the corpse in the trunk of his car. Lee leaves it to his readers to make the connections between the story's rather over-the-top set of coincidences and figure out their collective significance.

“Gone Fishing”

We don't learn the first names of the on-the-lam duo of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's “Gone Fishing.” They've stolen an Inca sacrificial knife from New York City's Natural History Museum. They'd made a deal to sell the stolen artifact to Lipski, a psychopathic criminal fence, who'd planned, in return, to sell it to a wealthy collector. After stealing the knife, though, Woffler and Perotta decide to cut out Lipski, the “middleman,” and fence the item themselves; failing to find a buyer, they'll melt the knife down for its rubies and gold.

First, however, they plan to lie low and have rented a mountain cabin surrounded by woods near Passumkeag Lake, New Hampshire. On their way to their destination, Perotta annoys Woffler by needlessly drawing attention to them by speeding, sending his hamburger back twice at a restaurant, staring at a tough ex-con in the restaurant and spewing rocks and dust over him as he peels out of the parking lot, and honking at a psychedelic VW bus bearing “Honk if You Support Pro-Choice” bumper stickers.

Soon after their arrival at the cabin, they hear a knock at their front door, but no one is there. They imagine they've heard the sound—then, there's a second knock. Investigating, Woffler sees footprints at the edge of the woods, leading into the forest. At Perotta's insistence, Woffler follows the footprints into the woods. Both men wonder whether his partner plans to double-cross him and abscond with the stolen relic. Perotta also wonders whether their mysterious stalker is the ex-con. Although Perotta also suspects Lipski, he thinks the fence an unlikely suspect. He also dismisses Lipski's potential buyer, who wouldn't know of the theft yet.

Thirty minutes pass. Woffler has not returned to the cabin. Perotta hears what might have been a scream and, arming himself with a flashlight, sets out on his partner's trail. Along the way, he sees what he thinks is a mushroom, then a shell; the object, he realizes to his horror, is, in fact, a severed human ear.

Fleeing, he becomes lost. He suspects the stalker is Lipski, after all; suspicious of Woffler and Perotta, Lipski has followed them. A bloody hand seizes Perotta, but he shakes it off and hastens from the area, still lost. His flashlight illuminates a severed foot, then a decapitated head. A voice threatens to do to Perotta hat was done to other victims.

Natural History Museum, New York City

The story skips forward. Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, NYPD, is on the scene as local investigators bag the body parts. Police have determined that the victims are Woffler and Perotta, employees of New York's natural History Museum. Local police have found the men's wallets and Ids and the stolen knife and called the NYPD, having heard of the heist. D'Agosta warns a local police officer that there will be more victims and that the murders of Woffler and Perotta ave nothing to do with the sacrificial knife they stole, but the officer does not believe D'Agosta.

The story skips ahead again, as the serial killer, The Fisherman, sits inside his psychedelic VW bus, parked by the side of the road leading out of town. A passing car, noting the bumper stickers on his bus, honks. Thankful to God that He has given him another opportunity to “serve” Him by killing and dismembering “another killer of the unborn,” the murderer drives onto the road and follows the carload of his next victims.

Techniques

Child and the writing team of Douglas and Preston use their own techniques to craft their stories, techniques that help them to build their thrillers.

Detective Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragmet

Child uses a straightforward approach, in which he straightforwardly moves from one incident to the next, using a journalistic style in which, despite his stories' intense emotions, seems to present “just the facts,” as Dragnet's Sergeant Friday was fond of saying to witnesses recounting their stories. This happened, and then this, followed by this next thing. His technique lulls the reader into accepting the events, even when they would become hard to believe otherwise. Just what are the chances that a wanted arsonist would encounter a murderer disguised as a police officer—and a military police officer, at that? Whatever they are, the odds become even less likely when the killer just happens to have a few sets of fake Ids in the trunk of his car, the one inside which he's hauling his victim's dead body. However, thanks to Child's disarmingly straightforward, matter-of-fact style, readers are likely to pass over so,me of these “details” or at least pretend to turn a blind eye to them. Child's style, in short, helps readers to maintain a Coleridge an “willing suspension of disbelief.”

Preston and Child pile up details—a lot of them—while tossing half a dozen suspects at readers. The story's incidents snowball, but, at the same time, have a relationship with the other incidents of the story, incidents bound to other incidents and to characters, and characters tied to other characters and to incidents. What is a simple story, when everything is unraveled at the end, seems complex and mysterious in the telling. Who's out there, in the woods (and the swamp), stalking the pair of robbers? The ex-con? Lipski, the fence? Lipski's prospective customer? One or the other of the two robbers himself, intending to double cross his partner in crime? The vengeful spirit associated with the stolen Inca knife of sacrifice? These suspects are linked through the crime Woffler and Perotta have committed; through their road trip; through Perotta's making “scenes” along the way, by speeding, harassing a waitress, eyeballing and dissing an ex-con, and honking at a VW bus parked alongside the highway, during the robbers' drive from New York to New Hampshire; and by the remote cabin they rent in the deep woods. Everything is related, but only one set of relationships, in the end, counts. Preston and Child keep their readers guessing by a style that draws relationships everywhere, at all times.

The juxtaposition of a museum in a world-class city with the barbarism of The Fisherman is also a technique that increases the emotional thrill of the horror in the woods.

Showing Off the Neighborhood

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Stephen King is known for the small-town settings of his horror novels, but other novelists also find plenty of horror in small-town settings, including Dan Simmons (Summer of Night), Robert R. McCammon (Boy's Life), Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Still Life with Crows), Dean Koontz (Phantoms), and, of course, Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes).

It's not hard to see the appeal of such stories.

Small towns are, in a way, an extension of home, as the term “hometown” suggests. In the past, especially, whether realistically or naively, many families left their doors unlocked at night and allowed their kids to roam the neighborhood at will, the single caveat “be home by dark.”

A community, we like to think, is a safe place, like home. It's a place full of friends, we like to believe. It's a place where everyone knows everyone else. There are, in small towns, interrelationships of many kinds: familial, romantic, friendly, neighborly, commercial.

One of the challenges that writers face when a small town is the setting of their novels is familiarizing readers with the community. Lots of people live in the town, people of various statuses, living on different streets, and performing different functions. Sometimes, those we think we know are actually strangers—perhaps dangerous ones—and those we don't know all that well turn out to be heroes. In a small town, anything is possible.

But how to introduce the town and its people, the townspeople? How to show their relationships to others? How to indicate their own hopes and dreams, fears and uncertainties?

In other words, how may readers be shown about town?

Writers tackle this task in several ways. Here are a few.

 

Still Life with Crows: The authors opt for description:

Medicine Creek, Kansas. Early August. Sunset.

The great sea of yellow corn stretches from horizon to horizon under an angry sky . . . .

One road cuts through the corn from north to south; another from east to west . . . .

A giant slaughterhouse stands south of the town, lost in the corn, its metal sides scoured by years of dust storms . . . .

The temperature is exactly 100 degrees . . . .

Twilight is falling over the landscape . . . .

A black-and-white police cruiser passes along the main street, heading east into the great nothingness of corn, its headlights stabbing into the rising darkness . . . 

Something Wicked This Way Comes: The author moves from character to character:

The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm . . . .

There's nothing n the living world like books on water cures, deaths-of-a-thousand slices, or pouring white-hot lava off castle walls on drolls and mountebanks.

So said Jim Nightshade . . . .

Watching the boys vanish away, Charles Holloway suppressed a sudden urge to run with them . . . .

Phantoms: The author uses an eclectic approach, using description, and skipping from one character to another, but employing the dramatic, or “showing,” method rather than the expository (“telling”) method to bot introduce his town and townspeople and to generate and maintain suspense:

The scream was distant and brief, a woman's scream.

Deputy Paul Henderson looked up from his copy of Time. . . .

During the twilight hour of that Sunday in early September, the mountains were painted in only two colors: green and blue. The trees—pine, fir, spruce—looked as though they had been fashioned from the same felt that covered billiard tables. Cool, blue shadows lay everywhere, growing larger and deeper and darker by the minute.

Jenny Paige had never seen a corpse like this one.

The Santinis' stone and redwood house was of more modern design than Jenny's place, all rounded corners and gentle angles. . . .

Whichever technique an author uses—and the few above are but a tiny sample—he or she must make the setting seem “real” (i. .e, believable), provide a sense of “thereness,” create and sustain suspense, introduce the characters (townspeople), and, of course, establish a mystery that's rooted in horror. If, in the process, they can establish theme or symbolism or tone or point of view bigger than those of his or her characters' individual perspectives on life, those are pluses—and big ones.

In a later post, we'll consider how horror movies that feature small-town settings show viewers around their neighborhoods.

Creating Hostile or Threatening Settings

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Writers of horror fiction have several ways by which to suggest threatening or hostile environments.

1. Writers can depict a setting that is, in itself, bizarre.

I know a homeowner, Bruce, who cut down all the trees in his yard. He'd had a swimming pool installed in his backyard, and he was frustrated when, each fall, his trees dropped their leaves, littering his lawn and the surface of his new pool. His solution was to chop down not only the trees in his backyard, but all his trees, including those in his front and side yards. At no charge, he even volunteered to cut down the trees of his neighbor, but the neighbor declined his offer. 

Most of us, I believe, would have said no thanks, because most of us love trees. They're big, beautiful symbols of life—and they provide shade. So what if they drop their leaves every autumn? Everybody poops. (Yes, dead leaves are essentially tree droppings.) 

But, when we're confronted with trees unlike any most of us have ever seen, trees that are not only unfamiliar to us but also strange-looking? Then, maybe we'd give Bruce a call.

A case in point: the dragon tree (Dracaena cinnabaril), which thrives on Yemen's remote Socotra Island an on the Canary Islands. Named for its red sap, this tree looks as though it was planted upside down, its limbs resembling roots at the end of which grow clumps of stubby leaves. In bloom, their blossoms grow among their leaves, looking pretty much like yellow versions of the former. Unfortunately, the population of these trees has been greatly reduced and now consists mostly of only mature trees. Scientists describe the tree's status as “vulnerable,” which places it between “near threatened” and “endangered.”

Another bizarre inhabitant of Socotra Island is the cucumber tree (Dendrosicyos socotrana). It has “a bulbous trunk and a small crown,” bearing 10-inch “round leaves” with “slightly toothed” bristles and inch-long yellow fruit.

The bottle tree (Pachypodium lealii Welw) is also a rather odd-looking specimen, resembling a turnip planted upside down. This tree grows is indigenous to the Namibia.

The Juniper Tree (Juniperus phoenicea), which grows on Spain's El Hierro Island, literally bends over backward. Some, such as the one shown here, resemble human figures. Coming unexpectedly upon such a tree at dusk might send a chill up one's spine.

This bizarre specimen, the Tree of Tule, a Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) makes its home in a Oaxaca, Mexico, churchyard. Did it not exist, a description of its appearance might seem unbelievable. Some see the shapes of jaguars, elephants, and other animals in the bark of the ancient tree's trunk, which gives it the nickname “The Tree of Life.”

 This West Australian boab tree (Adansonia gregorii ) allegedly doubled as a jail. Prisoners would be kept inside the tree overnight on their way from one place to another.

California's boojum tree (Fouquieria columnaris) is tall, exceedingly slender, and nearly leafless. Imagine walking up on a forest of these in the middle of the desert on a moonlit night. According to Seri beliefs, “touching this plant will cause strong winds to blow (an undesirable state).”

This kapok tree's strange trunk appears to consist of three branches that have grown woody “webbing” between one another. The trunk is broad enough so that two or more thick branches, each pointing in its own direction, can grow from the same side of the trunk.

The time-space continuum warp featured toward the end of my urban fantasy novel A WholeFull of World of Hurt, which was inspired by Steve Ditko's illustrations of the enchanted realms through which Marvel Comics's Dr. Strange traveled on his astral journeys, is (like Ditko's own mystical lands) a good illustration of this approach. The execution of this technique doesn't have to involve the use of surreal imagery, though, as Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King's Rose Red and The Shining, and Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine indicate.

2. Another way to suggest threatening or hostile environments is to make the familiar seem strange. The strange appearance of the trees we described (above) may not, in itself, be frightening enough to horrify readers (but their looks are a start!). Writers need to associate the odd-looking trees with bizarre origins or give them a back story (such as a legend) that gives them a horrific provenance. Imagining answers to questions about some of the trees described above may offer some possibilities.

What, precisely, is threatening the existence of the dragon tree? Could the tree's name derive from a source other than the accepted one? Could it have grown from the spawn of actual (now extinct) dragons, which would account for its blood-red sap? Perhaps such trees are capable, under the right circumstances, or spontaneous combustion.

Are the human shapes discernible in the bent-over-backward juniper trees actual humans who've been incorporated into tree branches, perhaps through dark magic? Were they dancers in some sort of fantastic ritual?

Do the animal shapes amid the bark of the Tree of Tule actually come to life at times? Do its elephants, jaguars, and other beasts spring from its bark to do the will of those who conjure them, returning to their passive, woody state after fulfilling their summoners' deadly missions? 

Is a character among your adventurers a criminal whose past catches up with him or her when the band passes the Boab Prison Tree? Is it more than a jail? Maybe the tree practices its own brand of vigilante justice, acting as judge, jury, and executioner concerning violent offenders who've escaped justice (until they encountered the Prison Tree). 

Why would someone generate a desert vortex—and who planted the mysterious boojum tree that creates such an effect? A Seri? Someone else? Research the Seri, and if their beliefs don't seem, by modern standards, strange enough to intrigue and, more importantly, frighten readers, substitute an imaginary people and their beliefs for those of the Seri. All is possible in fantastic fiction, after all, a genre which includes horror. Don't forget to include a bizarre motivation for the horrific horticulturalists.

Of course, the context in which the trees are introduced also makes them frightening. A writer must build toward his or her character's encounter of the mysterious trees, and the author's account of the tree's nature and origin must be fantastic and dark, if it's to generate fear.

Bentley Little is a master of this approach. In particular such of his novels as The Resort and The Influence are especially good examples of this approach. Dan Simmons's Summer of Night is also evocative of hostile landscapes, as is Stephen King's It and Dean Koontz's The Taking. Other masters of this technique include Nathaniel Hawthorne ("Young Goodman Brown") and Edgar Allan Poe ("TheFall of the House of Usher")

3. Authors can focus on the disconcerting, possibly sinister, details of an everyday place. An effective technique is to search an image browser using a phrase such as “eerie photos of landscapes.” Conducting such a search, using this same phrase, resulted in these (selected) images. (As my search term suggest, I restricted my search to scenes of actual, existing exterior places—as far as I can determine.) In considering your own gallery, ask yourself what characteristics make the photographs seem eerie. Think about both the literal (physical) and the psychological aspects of the environment.

This photograph shows dense foliage. The trees, bushes, and other forms of plant life are clothed, as it were, in thick growths of leaves that make the eye wander. One's gaze is easily lost in the abundance of detail. The tufts, clusters, and clumps of vegetation among the shadowy “hollows” between the leafy trees lead the eye in many directions and, at the same time, nowhere. We are genetically hard-wired to seek patterns in everything, but this mass of flora exhibits no discernible form or structure; it is a senseless tangle, a meaningless maze, offering no clue as to its location or context. However, our minds are reluctant to accept this symbol of meaninglessness; we are apt to stare, demanding that some meaning assert itself, even if we must invent such meaning ourselves, imagining faces or forms that exist only in our own minds, seeing her a visage, there a figure. Therein lies the possibility for terror: the abundance of foliage is a mirror of the soul, as we project upon it our own tortured fantasies; committing the pathetic fallacy, we envision a menacing place, a hell, of our own design. Denied orientation, we become confused and distraught; when meaning isn't forthcoming, we become anxious and unsettled.

At first, this slight, tree-lined berm may appear pleasantly bucolic, but this sense of sylvan beauty dissipates under closer inspection. What, we may wonder, lies buried under the extended mound? A monstrous worm, a serpent worthy of Ragnarok, a dragon? The trees, especially those in the foreground, are barren, and their sharp-pointed branches are stubby, as if they've been snapped off—but by what? Even more eerily, the row of trees on either side of the berm stand like sentinels, appearing to direct our steps, to channel us, suggesting that we take this elevated pathway to a point unknown. Are we the human equivalents of cattle being directed, along an arboreal chute, to the slaughter? How might these various perceptions—a grave for a snakelike monster, snapped-off branches, sentinel-like trees, a channeling landscape—add up to? What single scenario could unify and explain them? When we believe—or even feel—we have lost our autonomy, we experience panic.

A dark and foggy wood stimulates the imagination by depriving us of the light which is necessary for vision. In fog, as in darkness, our visibility is limited. We cannot see clearly or, sometimes, at all. Effectively blind, we can no longer be confident of our surroundings or of what threat to us may lurk ahead (or, for that matter, to either side or behind us). Dense clusters of branches and foliage also impedes vision. A remote location cuts us off from the aid of others. This photograph uses darkness, fog and the obstruction of abundant tree growth to obscure our vision, a remote site to isolate us, but it also seems to mock us. In a place devoid of human contact, we see a bench among clumps of grass, a bench green with lichen, moss, or algae, an artifact of human technology being overcome by nature. Shall this be our own fate? Cut off and alone, shall we succumb to our fate, our corpses taken over by invading plants? Perhaps we know why we began our journey, before we became lost, near nightfall, but where are we now? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say, but, certainly, we are alone. Deprivation of sight and the company of others, we feel vulnerable and helpless.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child succeed admirably in employing this approach in many of their novels, including Still Like with Crows, Crimson Shore, and White Fire. Bram Stoker's short story "The Burial of the Rats" is a tour de force.

"Terminal Freeze," Blow By Blow

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

I just finished reading Lincoln Child's novel, Terminal Freeze.  It's 320 pages long.  I read it in five hours.  That's 64 pages an hour, or a little more than a page a minute.  I'm not bragging, just making a point.  By using the same method that I use, you can read novels quickly, too.  Why would you want to do so?  You can read more of them, gaining a better perspective on either an individual's entire collection of work, a better understanding of the entire genre itself in which he or she works, or a better appreciation of both an individual author's work and the genre to which the work belongs, all with a minimum investment of time.  In addition to reading the novel, I also wrote one-sentence summaries of each of its chapters as I went, so that, by the time I'd read the entire novel, I had a summary of the entire story, which enhances my memory of what I've read and provides a handy dandy means of evaluating and critiquing the novel, should I ever wish to do so.

If you'd like to follow the method of my madness (or the madness of my method), here's what I do when I want to speed up the reading process:

1. First, read the blurb. A blurb is the text on the inside of a hardback book’s flyleaf (the paper cover in which hardback books are usually wrapped) or on the back cover of a paperback. by reading them, you’re saving yourself from having to read maybe fifty, or even 100, PAGES of the novel itself, and you will know the main character’s name, the setting, the basic storyline, and the names of lesser, supporting characters.
2. Realize that a chapter can be summarized in one sentence. Then, read the chapter only until you can summarize it in one sentence.
3. After each chapter, write a sentence that summarizes what it presented
4. Keep a list of characters’ names, brief phrases that identify them, and the names of the places in which the action takes place.
5. Skip most of the description and exposition. Read just the dialogue. By reading just the dialogue, you will be able to keep track of the story well enough to summarize it. Only dip into the descriptive or expository blocks of text when you need to do so to reestablish a sense of continuity and context--maybe twice or so every four or five chapters. You will find that you are skipping entire pages of the text and still know what’s going on.
6. After reading and summarizing each chapter and updating your list of characters and settings, stop! You are done with the book. 

Here is the result of my application of this process to Terminal Freeze:

Chapter 1: The face of a melting glacier near Alaska’s Mount Fear falls away, revealing the mouth of an ice cave.

Chapter 2: Scientists exploring the cave find a monstrous beast (a gigantic cat) frozen in the ice.

Chapter 3: Although Usuguk, who travels south with his people, warns the scientists to leave the region, declaring that they have trespassed upon holy land, defiling it with their presence, the scientists refuse to leave.

Chapter 4: Kari Ekberg, a Hollywood location scout, arriving at the scientists’ research station to prepare for a docudrama about the discovery of the frozen beast, is given a tour of the facility--except for the northern section, which is off limits to her and everyone else, including the squad of soldiers who maintain and guard the post.

Chapter 5: As they escort Ekberg to the ice cave to see the beast, two scientists, paleoecologist Evan Marshall and evolutionary biologist Wright Faraday, explain their expertise to her.

Chapter 6: In an underground bunker below Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, Jeremy Logan, allegedly a professor of medieval history, reads a secret memorandum concerning the deaths of a team of scientists who had been encamped at Mount Fear.

Chapter 7: Emilio Conti, the executive producer, begins filming on location, explaining that the host of the docudrama will arrive before the crew ascends Mount Fear to cut the beast from the ice--live, on camera, before millions of viewers.

Chapter 8: The Hollywood team’s legal representative, Wolff, shows the scientists a contract that their leader, Gerard Scully, signed, authorizing them to extract and thaw the beast’s carcass, on live television, despite the scientists’ objections.

Chapter 9: Using a laser and a diamond-tipped drill, the television crew extracts a block of ice in which the beast is entombed from the ice cave’s wall and transports it to a climate-controlled vault to thaw before the eyes of their television audience.

Chapter 10: Conti interviews Marshall, dramatizing the setting and dialogue, but angering the scientist when he asks him about his “dishonorable discharge” from the army, despite his having been awarded the Silver Star, and his refusal to carry a weapon, and Marshall refuses to cooperate further.

Chapter 11: Faraday reports to his colleagues that tests he’s conducted indicate that the beast is not the saber-toothed tiger they’d supposed it to be; it is at least twice the size of such an animal.

Chapter 12: An examination of the carcass--or what can be seen of it inside the block of ice--proves inconclusive as to the animal’s identity.

Chapter 13: The docudrama’s host, Ashleigh Davis, arrives, by helicopter, along with her trailer, which has been trucked in aboard an eighteen-wheeler driven by Carradine, an ice road trucker.

Chapter 14: Logan, identifying himself as a hitchhiker, who was picked up by Carradine on his way to deliver Davis’ trailer, introduces himself as the scientists gather to watch the docudrama host film a sequence of her show outside the climate-controlled vault.

Chapter 15: Marshal awakens to discover that a hole has been cut through the floor of the climate-controlled vault.

Chapter 16: Wolff locks down the compound so he can investigate and recover the carcass stolen from the vault, but the new arrival, Logan, is nowhere to be found.

Chapter 17: Faraday, having taken pictures of the hole in the vault’s floor, determined that the hole was made from above, not from below, as Wolff had supposed, which indicates that whoever sawed the hole through the floor knew the combination to the vault’s lock.

Chapter 18: Conti believes that the carcass was stolen through an act of sabotage to be disposed of and vows to make a documentary of the crime, asking Marshall to star in the film.

Chapter 19: Logan tells Marshall about the recently declassified memorandum concerning the deaths of the scientists at Fear Base.

Chapter 20: Josh Peters relieves McCoy Tyner, searching the compound for the carcass of the beast, and is attacked from behind and knocked unconscious.

Chapter 21: Faraday and the team’s graduate assistant, Ang Chen, tell Marshall of test results they’ve obtained on ice from the cave in which the creature was encased: it seems to contain ice--and a microscopic view of the photograph Faraday took of the hole in the floor suggests that the hole was made from teeth, not a saw, as if it had been chewed through.

Chapter 22: Logan reconnoiters E Level of the research facility, where he encounters the military leader, Sergeant Gonzalez, who tells him that the facility’s off-limits section had “extra berths” in it “that no military ever used” and is rumored to have involved the mauling by a polar bear of scientists who were involved in top secret work.

Chapter 23: After Marshall and his team’s computer scientist, Penny Barbour, put Conti, Wolff, and Ekberg on notice that the filmmakers will be sued if they libel or slander the scientists in their docudrama about the climate-controlled vault’s having been sabotaged, they inform the Hollywood executives that one of their men, Josh Peters, has been “torn apart” beyond the compound’s “security fence.”

Chapter 24: At Wolff’s request, Marshall examines the body, concluding that a polar bear could have killed Peters, but Wolff still insists that the creature’s carcass was stolen in an act of sabotage and suggests that Peters was killed to frighten the rest of them from continuing the Hollywood team’s search for the missing creature.

Chapter 25: Intent upon making a revised docudrama of the creature‘s theft and Peter‘s supposed murder as part of the sabotage of their original film, Conti sends one film crew to photograph the fearful reaction of the rest of the crew to the news of Peter’s horrific death and a second crew to film Peters’ corpse before it is put into cold storage.

Chapter 26: Logan discovers a notebook--perhaps a journal--that one of the scientists on the earlier, catastrophic, aborted mission kept while at Fear Base.

Chapter 27: A he prepares to leave the room in which Peters’ corpse is temporarily stored., having photographed the body, cameraman Ken Toussaint encounters “the face of nightmare.”

Chapter 28: Faraday reports to Marshall his suspicion that the ice that encased the creature was unusual and melted below the freezing mark, allowing the animal trapped inside, which may have been alive rather than dead, to escape after its ice prison had melted.

Chapter 29: Trying to pitch a screenplay to Davis, Carradine escorts her to her trailer, where they hear a loud knocking, which turns out to b Toussaint, hanging from one of the trailer’s window awning support arms, who, although he first appears dead, screams, “It plays with you! And then when it’s finished playing--it kills.”

Chapter 30: Toussaint, who has survived the attack upon him, describes his attacker as huge and equipped with many teeth; Peters’ corpse is missing; Wolff refuses to allow Carradine to drive the crew to safety in Davis’ trailer, which he offers to tow behind his eighteen-wheeler.

Chapter 31: Logan tells Marshall that the dead scientist’s journal hints at horrific events at Fear Base, and Marshall decides to take a snowmobile to visit the Tunits to see whether they can shed any light on the incidents, past and present, that have occurred at the research facility.

Chapter 32: When Allan Fortnum returns from shooting images of the Hollywood crew’s horrified reactions to Peters’ death, Conti gives the cinematographer his next assignment: stand by to film the monster as it tears its next victim apart--but Fortnum refuses to be party to this outrageous task.

Chapter 33: Both Davis and PFC Donovan Fluke, who escorts to her new accommodations, which are closer to those of the military troop attached to Fear Base to afford her better protection, are attacked by the monster.

Chapter 34: Visiting the Tunits’ settlement, Marshall finds it deserted except for Usuguk, who has remained behind to speak to the scientist, certain that Marshall would come.

Chapter 35: Sergeant Gonzalez orders the camp evacuated; everyone will ride in Davis’ trailer, which Carradine will tow with his eighteen-wheeler; meanwhile, Gonzalez plans to hunt for the beast; when Marshall returns, his colleagues plan to meet with him; only Conti and Ekberg refuse to leave, staying to film yet another revised docudrama.

Chapter 36: After Marshall tells Usuguk how he had accidentally killed his friend during the war in Somalia and had refused to cover up his mistake, thereby earning a dishonorable discharge, Usuguk agrees to accompany him on his hunt for the creature, but only as an unarmed advisor--and the shaman won’t share what he knows about the slaughter of the earlier scientific expedition party.

Chapter 37: Sergeant Gonzalez and his two men, Marcelin and Phillips, remain at Fear Base to hunt the beast after everyone else but Creel, Faraday, Scully, Marshall, Logan, Conti, Ekberg, and Wolff leaves in Davis trailer, which is towed by Carradine’s big rig.

Chapter 38: Conti and Ekberg plan to follow the soldiers, filming their hunt of the creature.

Chapter 39: Marshall returns to the nearly deserted research facility with Usuguk and learns of the monster’s killing of Davis and Fluke; Usuguk tells the others that he was the sole survivor among the earlier research party, “the one who got away.”

Chapter 40: The military troop, commanded by Sergeant Gonzalez and accompanied by Creel, the roustabouts’ foreman, follow the beast’s bloody tracks through the base‘s power station, and it attacks the group, killing Creel, after which Gonzalez retreats.

Chapter 41: Usuguk, a former soldier who had been stationed at Fear Base, tells the others how another, smaller spirit-beast killed the scientists of the earlier expedition and declares that the larger one awakened by the present expedition is an invincible and immortal guardian of the mountain in which Fear Base is installed--it cannot be killed, but it will kill them all.

Chapter 42: After crossing a frozen lake, the tractor-trailer is caught in a gust of wind that slams it into a rock and breaks one of the fuel tanks; the other tank is only one third full, and there is not enough fuel to take them the rest of the way to their destination, Arctic Village.

Chapter 43: Inside the base’s power station, the soldiers try to electrocute the creature, but to no avail.

Chapter 44: Following the soldiers, Conti, Wolff, and Ekberg find the bloody trail and Conti films Ekberg’s reaction to seeing the head that the monster had ripped from Creel’s body.

Chapter 45: Faraday finds that the monster’s white blood cell-rich blood makes it impervious to bullets but is hypersensitive to--and may be killed by--sound, so maybe they can convert the secret wing of the base into an echo chamber; meanwhile, Sergeant Gonzalez’s attempt to raise Conti and Ekberg on the radio is unsuccessful.

Chapter 46: Conti, having forbidden Ekberg to respond to Gonzalez’s radio call, orders Wolff and Ekberg to investigate a stairwell with him, and they feel pressure inside their skulls as the monster approaches them through the darkness.

Chapter 47: As Usuguk tells the party his people’s legends concerning the monster, Gonzalez, Sully, Marshall, Faraday, Phillips, and the shaman find an already-built echo chamber in the secret section of the facility.

Chapter 48: The creature kills Conti, but Ekberg escapes.

Chapter 49: Ekberg radios Marshall, advising him of Conti’s death and of her own risk, and, while Scully seeks batteries to operate the echo chamber’s sound equipment, Marshall rendezvous with Ekberg to protect her from the monster and lead her back to a site outside the echo chamber, where the monster can be ambushed.

Chapter 50: As the monster pursues them, Marshall and Ekberg retreat toward the ambush site, only to learn that no batteries are available and that the scientists have had to connect the sound equipment to a power source inside the echo chamber itself, which is farther than Marshall had anticipated.

Chapter 51: The sound equipment fails to stop the creature (as does a barrage of bullets), which attacks Scully, who is operating the sonar weapon, and tears him limb from limb.

Chapter 52: Marshall retreats with the sonar weapon into the echo chamber, where the sound is magnified, and, using a different set of “harmonics,” kills the monster with the sound waves, which cause its head to explode.

Chapter 53: Against all odds, Carradine’s big rig manages to haul the trailer to Arctic Village.

Epilogue: Logan suggests that the first beast was the second creature’s pet and that the latter had been searching for the former when it became encased in the wall of the ice cave.

Learning from the Masters: Lincoln Child Shows Us How to Write an Effective Opening Chapter

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Typically, an opening chapter, beginning in media res, sets up a mysterious, sometimes bizarre, situation that involves danger, compelling a character (usually the protagonist) to take immediate corrective action, the outcome of which may be left, for the moment, in doubt.

Let’s take a look at each of these elements.

In media res means “in the middle of things,” and refers to the narrative technique of presenting an incident out of context, apart from the related sequence of related incidents of which it is a part. A classic example in detective fiction is to begin the story with the discovery of a murder victim’s corpse. Obviously, someone killed the person. Who? How?, Why?, When?, and even Where? (the dastardly deed could have been done somewhere else and the body moved from the true crime scene to its present location) are all implicit, but as-yet, unanswered questions. The incidents that led up to the murder have been omitted. The story, in other words, has begun in media res.

The way to create mystery is to withhold key explanatory details that would create a context in which the situation would be understood. Often, such details relate to who or what is causing the situation, how the situation is being caused, or why it is being caused. A writer has only five questions with which to work in developing his or her plot and in creating, maintaining, and heightening the suspense that keeps readers reading: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, How?, and Why?* It is best, perhaps, in the opening chapter to address as few of these vital questions as possible. If an author supplies the what?, for example, and need to address the other four questions, it is probably best to leave them for later. By keeping the reader guessing concerning these questions, the writer maintains suspense.

The bizarre, of course, is the unusual. The unusual can be outlandish, but it need not be. The unusual can be a description of the life of a little-known people, such as an arctic or an Amazonian tribe. It can be a look into the customs of a different culture, past, present, or future. It can involve an expedition to another world. The unusual can be the anomalous, phenomena that do not fit the current scientific view of nature or reality. The bizarre may relate to the monstrous, the abnormal, the deviant, the fiendish, or the aberrant. Folklore, legends, and myths are sources, at times, for beliefs and attitudes that may seem bizarre to modern men and women.

Danger is most often associated with the body; it is physical. Such danger should always be present in a horror novel, of course (and is present in almost all genre fiction). However, physical danger is often coupled another type of danger--theological, philosophical, social, familial, or technological, for example, which compounds and elevates the physical dangers to which the characters are exposed. Danger to the body is frightening, but when such danger is coupled with perils to faith, belief, nation, family, or infrastructure, the fear is magnified.

The danger must force the character (usually the protagonist) to take immediate corrective action, but what is “corrective action”? Ideally (from the characters point of view), it is action that solves the problem which he or she has encountered in the opening chapter’s situation. From the readers’ point of view, though, the problem should never be so small or simple that it can be easily solved by the endangered character. Instead, his or her attempt to solve the problem should fail and, in fact, lead to or cause an even greater, related problem. Therefore, “corrective action” might mean no more than evading the danger, escaping it, or temporarily neutralizing it, only to have the same peril recur, with greater intensity or be replaced by a superior, but related, hazard. Until the end of the story, “corrective action” is generally either evasive action or stop-gap measures designed to postpone what seems to be inevitable death and destruction or a failure of some lesser sort. (As a rule, if the opening chapter does not involve the protagonist, the character who is involved in the opening chapter’s situation must turn out to be related in some way, directly or indirectly, to the protagonist or the protagonist’s plight.)

Lincoln Child’s novel Terminal Freeze offers a textbook case of beginning one’s story in media res and of setting up a mysterious, sometimes bizarre, situation that involves danger, compelling a character (usually the protagonist) to take immediate corrective action.

A tribal shaman invokes a ritual by which he hopes to appease gods who, he believes, have been angered by a woman’s careless violation of a taboo--a violation that has already led to some (unnamed) catastrophe and which, if it is not propitiated, may lead to more, even worse calamities. He performs the ritual, but it doesn’t work. Instead, something far worse threatens his people, and the shaman realizes that it is not the woman’s accidental breaking of the taboo, nor is it the failure of the ritual, but something far worse: “Only a violation of the most serious of all taboos could cause the kind of spirit fury he now paid witness to” (4). The shaman’s response is to order the woman to pack her belongings, for they must leave the next day, to travel south, “to the mountain” (5), where the violation of the most sacred taboo, presumably, has occurred. Readers are left hanging, so to speak, concerning the question as to whether the shaman and his people will be able to put matters right. If not, what horrible fate awaits them? This is another question that, left, for the moment unanswered, compels further reading.

*Some argue that a sixth question, How many? or How much? is also implied by any situation.

The First Three Closing Paragraphs in “Gideon’s Sword”: A Study in Motivation

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

An earlier series of posts examined Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s use of opening chapters in their latest Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast novel, Fever Dream. In this series, I will take a look at the authors’ use of the first three closing paragraphs in their first Gideon Crew novel, Gideon’s Sword. Since I won’t be providing more than the most cursory and pointed chapter synopses, readers who are interested in how this thriller arrives at these closing paragraphs will have to read the book, which is unlikely to be the best thing that ever happened to them, but will likely be a fairly satisfying experience.

Here’s the closing paragraph of chapter 1:

“Dad!” he screamed into the grass, trying to claw back to his feet as the weight of the world piled up on his shoulders, but he’d seen those feet move, his father was alive, he would wake up and all would be well (7).

At this point in the novel, Gideon is twelve years old; he has just seen his father shot, numerous times--has seen him, in effect, assassinated by soldiers as he sought to surrender, hands up, having released his hostage. His screaming of “Dad” reinforces the father-son relationship that the chapter established earlier, and young Gideon is portrayed almost as though he is an animal: he is belly down, in the “grass,” screaming as he seeks to “claw” his way “back to his feet.” A pitiful figure, the boy is made even more so by his hope (vain hope, readers will surmise) that his father, who has been shot multiple times, will survive. This paragraph brings the chapter’s action to a climax and motivates readers to read on. It also characterizes Gideon, showing his love for his father, his desperation, and his naiveté.

As chapter 1 ends with the dying of Gideon’s father, chapter 2 concludes with the demise of his mother, who has extracted from her son, who is now twenty-two years old, the promise that Gideon will avenge his father’s murder:

Those were her last words, words that would resonate endlessly in his mind. You’ll figure out a way (13).

Her words, reiterated by the omniscient narrator in italics, become important to the authors’ characterization of Gideon as a young man who can and does perform the impossible, not only in avenging his father’s murder, but also in saving the world--or, at least, the United States. His love for his parents motivates him to plan, to scheme, to strategize, long-term and on the fly, persevering against all odds until he succeeds in attaining his objective. The deaths of his parents, whom he loves, fuels his resourcefulness, his perseverance, and his occasional ruthlessness.

Chapter 3 ends with a single-sentence conclusion:

There was only one way to find out (17).

Gideon has developed a specialized search engine that tracks hits concerning the classified document that his father had written for the government, and, during this chapter, he discovers that a hit has occurred “in a table of contents released to the National Security Archives at George Washington University” concerning his father’s “still-classified” report, “A Critique of the Thresher Discrete Logarithm Encryption Standard EVP-4: A Theoretical Back-Door Cryptanalysis Attack Strategy Using a Group of y-Torsion Points of an Elliptic Curve Characteristic y.” To most readers, myself included, this title is apt to sound impressive, despite its unintelligibility, and this effect, perhaps, is all that Preston and Child intend. For his part, despite his own mathematical aptitude, Gideon is unable to understand all of the document, although he realizes that “this [may] be the memo that General Tucker had supposedly destroyed” and the one that his father had been authored in criticism of the “Thresher” logarithm that got him killed. Given the motivations of his love for his parents and his desire to honor his mother by avenging his father’s murder, readers are likely to be convinced that Gideon will do whatever he needs to do to accomplish his mission now that he has what may be the lead he has long sought. If there is “only one way to find out” whether this is the “brass ring” he’s been seeking, readers will likely believe that Gideon will do it, whatever it is.

Note: To further strengthen Gideon’s motivation to serve his country, even after he has avenged his father’s murder, he is informed that he has but one year left to live, for he is dying of a “vein of Galen aneurismal malformation,” or “an abnormal tangle of arteries and veins in the brain involving the great cerebral vein of Galen,” a “usually congenital and usually asymptomatic” condition which is both inoperable and fatal, usually within a year or two (72-73). Given this veritable death sentence, Gideon is told, he can either “spend your last year amusing yourself, living life to the fullest, cramming it in till the end” or “working for your country” (75). That Gideon chooses the latter alternative ennobles him to readers and reinforces his motivation to do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals and to serve his country.

Fever Dream’s Opening Paragraphs (Chapters 1 through 20: Recap)

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The opening paragraphs of Chapters 1 through 20 of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Fever Dream (like the rest of those which introduce the novel’s other 60 chapters) use a variety of techniques to accomplish several purposes. As I have observed in previous posts concerning this topic, these techniques and purposes include:

• Setting the scene
• Using figures of speech, such as similes, metaphors, images, and personifications to create atmosphere or tone
• Involving the reader in the action
• Beginning the narrative in media res
• Creating a sense of immediacy (or “you-are-here”) for the reader
• Generating, maintain, or increase suspense
• Contrasting nature with civilization
• Linking action to characters’ emotions
• Identifying points of view
• Characterizing characters by associating them with particular places
• Introducing new or recurring characters
• Alluding to past events in characters’ lives
• Planting clues or red herrings
• Describing places important to the action or theme
• Linking one distant location to another, both of which are scenes of the story’s cosmopolitan action
• Creating, maintain, or intensify conflicts
• Posing rhetorical questions, both explicit and implicit, for the reader’s consideration

Fever Dream’s Opening Paragraphs (Chapters 17 through 20)

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The opening paragraph of Chapter 17 of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Fever Dream locates the current action in New Orleans’ Tulane University, as the protagonist arrives at the school’s Health Sciences Center, downtown, on Tulane Street, to visit Miriam Kendall. The link between the building and “New York’s financial district” links the action of the novel that occurs in Louisiana with the action that occurs in New York:

The downtown campus of Tulane University Health Sciences Center, on Tulane Street, was housed with a nondescript gray skyscraper that would not have looked out o place in new York’s financial district. Pendergast exited the elevator at the thirty-first floor, made his way to the Women’s Health Division, and--after a few enquiries--found himself before the door of Miriam Kendall (90).

Chapter 18 opens upon a tempestuous note. It also allows readers another glimpse of Pendergast’s palatial plantation house, as he makes his way to his vast collection of books. The authors’ use of such words as “moaned” and “worrying,” even though they are used to describe weather conditions, keep readers in mind of the mental anguish and worry that Pendergast is undergoing concerning his late wife’s murder and his attempt to find her killer. Likewise, a sense of the novel’s ongoing conflict is discernable in Preston and Child’s use of such verbs (again relating to the weather--at least ostensibly--and not to Pendergast per se) as “thrashing” and “beat,” and the mystery surrounding Helen’s death is underscored by the authors’ reference to the “heavy, swollen clouds” that “obscured the full moon,” just as the “the remains of a bottle”--an odd adjectival phrase, certainly--is a reminder of Helen’s remains:

Pendergast said good night to Maurice and, taking the remains of a bottle of Romanee-Conti 1964 he had opened at dinner, walked down the echoing central hall of Penumbra Plantation to the library. A storm had swept north from the Gulf of Mexico and the wind moaned about the house, worrying the shutters and thrashing the bare limbs of the surrounding trees. Rain beat on the windows, and heavy, swollen clouds obscured the full moon (95).

One forgets, almost, as he or she reads the opening paragraph to Chapter 19, that the protagonist is investigating his wife’s brutal murder in Zambia nine years ago. In “Bayou Goula, Louisiana,“ as the chapter’s tagline indicates, surrounded by the trappings of a luxury hotel’s “palm-lined courtyard,” the FBI’s Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast sits as still as a sculpture, his pale complexion reinforcing the illusion that he is one of the “alabaster statues that framed the gracious space.” Far away are the African wilds--and the concrete jungle of New York, where his investigation occasionally takes him or his assistant, first NYPD’s Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta :

Pendergast sat in the palm-lined courtyard in front of the elegant hotel, one black-clad leg draped over the other, arms crossed, motionless as the alabaster statues that framed the gracious space. The previous night’s storm had passed, ushering in a warm and sunny day full of the false promise of spring. Before him lay a wide driveway of white gravel. A small army of valets and caddies were busy ferrying expensive cars and gleaming golf carts here and there. Beyond the driveway was a swimming pool, sparkling azure in the late-morning light, empty of swimmers but surrounded by sunbathers drinking bloody Marys. Beyond the pool lay an expensive golf course, immaculate fairways and raked bunkers, over which strolled men in the broad brown swath of the Mississippi River (99).

The “elegance” of the hotel is emphasized by the paragraph’s allusions to “a small army of valets and caddies,” “expensive cars,” “gleaming golf carts” (and a golf course), and “a swimming pool, sparkling azure in the late-morning.” Perhaps, the reader may think, Pendergast is at a resort. If so, why, though? Isn’t he determined to find who murdered his wife and to bring the killer to justice? Perhaps Pendergast is taking a break, although such conduct would be out of character for him, as the reader has come, by way of other novels in which he appears, to know him. In any case, his sudden appearance at a luxury hotel makes readers curious and, curious, they read on, confident of finding answers to these rhetorical questions which they themselves have raised, in response to the protagonist’s unusual situation. Moreover, the authors keep the tension simmering by suggesting that, although “the previous night’s storm,” which had seemed so ominous, “had passed, ushering in a warm and sunny day,” it is a day which is, nevertheless, deceptive, a “day full of the false promise of spring.”

The opening paragraph of Chapter 20, the tagline of which locates the novel’s action in “St. Francesville, Louisiana,” shows D’Agosta as a man who is out of his element. As a homicide detective, the New York City investigator, is a member of the middle-class, moral, courageous, intelligent, and loyal, but far from wealthy or sophisticated. Nevertheless, he finds himself “in front of the white-washed mansion” known (readers learn in the next paragraph) as Oakley Plantation, having arrived not in a Porsche or a Rolls-Royce, as the wealthy Pendergast might arrive, but in a “rental car.” However, more significantly, the detective is out of his element when it comes to the assignment that Pendergast has given him. On one hand, it seems “hardly more than an errand,” although, on the other hand, it involves a subject matter that is beyond his experience, relating, as it does, to “dead birds”:

D’Agosta pulled up in front of the white-washed mansion, rising in airy formality from dead flower beds and bare-branched trees. The winter sky spat rain, puddles collecting on the blacktop. He sat up in the rental car for a moment, listening to the last lousy lines of “Just You and I” on the radio, trying to overcome his annoyance a having been sent on what was hardly more than an errand. What the hell did he know about dead birds? (106)

It is obvious that D’Agosta does not relish his present assignment. He thinks it both beneath him and beyond him. The weather seems to agree, for “the winter sky,” readers observe spit “rain,” as if to indicate its derision for the detective’s present mission. This paragraph accomplishes what Preston and Child often do, involving a character in a situation for which he or she seems ill-equipped, almost invariably going on to show, during the remainder of the chapter, just how well, as a matter of fact, the character is equipped (although neither he or she nor the reader would have likely believed this to be the case at the outset of the chapter) to resolve the situation’s dilemma or problem--and, of course, D’Agosta will prove more than a match for the situation involving the ‘dead birds.” (If he were not, Pendergast would not have dispatched him to attend to it.)

Having analyzed the opening chapters of twenty of Preston and Child’s Fever Dream, or twenty-five percent of the eighty chapters of which the novel, as a whole, is comprised, I believe that I have provided a representative sample of their opening-chapter techniques, and I plan to move on to other matters. However, one additional post concerning these authors’ use of opening chapters will follow, recapitulating the authors’ accomplishments in the use of the techniques I have identified and discussed.

Until then, sweet dreams. . . .