carl hiaasen's basket case
patricia cornwell. robert b. parker. and now carl hiaasen. seems like every prolific author eventually wears me down into disillusionment with his schtick when i read more than, say, three of his books. this time it's carl hiaasen, whom i've always liked. i am sorry he's disappointed me like the others.
i guess basket case's jack tagger is just the washed-up-middle-aged-hero-in-search-of-redemption who broke the camel's back. this book isn't wildly different from any of hiaasen's other books, but it's neither as irreverent nor as bizarre as i'd come to expect. basket case feels tired to me. sorry, carl, i doubt i'll be back.
Comments
that happened to me with tom robbins. after the first few, they were too...i don't know...indistinct.
Posted by: terry | April 6, 2003 11:24 PM
yeah, you know, when a friend gave me still life with woodpecker i was pretty sure tom robbins was a god. two more of his books later, eh.
Posted by: julie | April 6, 2003 11:29 PM
I'm not sure it's right to put Cornwell in with the other writers whose shtick comes to grate on you. She didn't keep the same old plot devices; instead she went bats-in-the-belfry. For the writers you talk about, it don't think it would matter which books in the series you read first; when an author truly goes round the bend, if you read the later books first you'll never botherwith the earlier ones.
Posted by: paul | April 8, 2003 05:00 PM