I was surprised to see Rohter reviewing a crime novel of all things. Until fairly recently he was the NYT's correspondent in South America. I wonder what his qualifications are for reviewing a detective novel other than his familiarity with the region (the book is set in Mexico). The NYT book review supplement is notorious for asking people from all walks to comment on books, an approach that is at best hit or miss. On the other hand, and in all fairness to Solares, his novel is pretty entertaining and doesn't seek to "transcend" the genre, perhaps the non-mystery critic's favorite cliche when reviewing a mystery book. I am reading the book right now and so far it has not disappointed.
-Gonzalo.
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "David Corbett" <davidcorbettauthor@...> wrote:
>
> Kerry:
>
> I like your point, though I wonder if cultivating a few trusted critics in this world of opinion overload isn't more important than ever. I'm not sure it's so much a case of proliferation of critics as erosion of the name critic's role by the disappearance of newspapers. This is currently creating a confusion that may, I hope, be temporary.
>
> Here's an interesting site for movie reviews that provides a number of review sources for each film currently showing: http://www.metacritic.com/ You can begin to get a real sense of a certain critic as reliable or not this way. It would be interesting to see if something like this developed for books, though I've not heard of any such project yet.
>
> BTW: In today's NYT, Larry Rohter made this remark in his review of The Black Minutes by Martin Solares: "The best detective novels are those that go beyond the limitations of genre and a specific story to limn the broader society in which they take place." This kind of thing always irks. I would say only the worst novels of any sort DON'T "limn" the broader society in which they take place, but even that's a bloated generalization waiting to be punctured. (Does Kafka's The Metamorphosis "limn the broader society," or does it go for something much deeper?)
>
> But I digress.
>
> David Corbett
> www.davidcorbett.com
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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