Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Forgiving Solomon Long

Forgiveness makes an interesting theme for a book. Chris Well used this as a jumping off place for his recently published novel, Forgiving Solomon Long, in which an assassin, hired by the mob to clean up an area of downtown Kansas City, is startled to hear the words "I forgive you" from his target just before he dies. What these three words do to Solomon Long carve out the remainder of the novel. The spiel I hear over at Faith in Fiction is that Chris's book is 'available wherever crime fiction is sold'.

It took me a bit to get into the story, which I finished last night. I found the extremely short chapters annoying, as well as the head-hopping. I'm not sure if the general guidelines are different for crime fiction (which I don't write and rarely read), so I gave the book the benefit of the doubt and tried to ignore the style. And it was worth it; I found the story engaging after that.

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