Just to clarify from the outset, 'secondary sex
characteristics' is a phrase used by researchers to describe
attributes that develop in adolescence and signal sexual
maturity (in a physical sense, not an emotional one). I
believe they're called secondary because they develop later
in life (a second stage of development, as it were). I was in
no way insinuating in my earlier post that females were
secondary.
Onwards...
I agree with Kevin and others that Crais' writing has
improved over time, but I still think his ability to write
convincing women has a way to go. Another option (a la
Pelecanos, from what I've read of him) is just to leave them
out altogether but Crais doesn't seem to want to go that
route. Dolan is an improvement on Lucy, and, no, I didn't
think it stretched credibility at all to think that an LAPD
homicide detective would be tough and hard-drinking, female
or not. Flawed characters are always more interesting than
perfect ones, and in fact, this explains much about why I
liked the Cole of L.A. Requiem much more than the Cole of
Monkey's Raincoat. Someone
(Jim?) hilariously described Cole as "Peter Pan," an apt
description. I think if Crais were more comfortable making
Cole genuinely flawed and not so supposedly irresistable,
Cole would be more interesting than he is.
I was interested in Dolan (hell, even the cat liked her)
which is why I think Crais is getting better, but I wasn't
fully convinced. I didn't find it credible that right off the
bat Dolan, assigned to babysit Cole and trying to figure out
how to work her way back into her department's good graces,
helps Cole, no matter how begrudgingly at first. Crais needed
that as a plot device to get Cole the info he needed at
various points but it made little sense otherwise for a
character as tough and self-reliant as Samantha. She may
distrust some of the folks in the LAPD but to ally with
Elvis, whom she had never met before the events of this book,
didn't jibe to me. If it were just a matter of her being
attracted to Cole, I could see that. As Kevin notes,
attraction is rarely rational. But she has been a cop for
years, and not only a cop, but a homicide detective in the
central downtown office. She would not have gotten there were
she at war with the department, as Kevin claims, and I doubt
she would turn her back on the force so quickly.
> >I haven't read Demolition Angel, but I'd be
happily surprised
> if
> >Crais manages to make her a 3-dimensional human
who doesn't
> >sound like a man who happens to have female
secondary sex
> >characteristics.
>
> I'm not sure where you're going with this. Does this
mean
> you're
> implying Dolan isn't credible because she sounds
like a man?
> Because
> she's a woman who's tough, tenacious and defiant? Or
because
> she drinks too much sometimes, and acts like an
asshole?
None of the above. It wasn't a comment about L.A. Requiem at
all. It was a comment about how many authors have trouble
writing from the perspective of the opposite sex. Martin Amis
is a gifted writer, for example, but in _Night Train_, his
female detective sounds like a man who happens to have
breasts
(hark, those pesky secondary sex characteristics <g>).
I'm drifting into the realm of the highly subjective here,
because I'm talking about whether an author can make a
character sound
'female,' or sound 'black,' or sound like a war veteran,
etc., as if there were a way these characters were "supposed"
to sound. I don't think there is a single way but I do think
that on an intuitive level and for whatever reason, in your
gut you develop an opinion about whether a character sounds
convincing. And based on what I've read of Crais, I find it
unlikely that he could pull off a woman's perspective.
YMMV.
cheers,
ts
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