The Name of This Book is Secret (Bosch)

Not much to say here. It's a novel. (By now my shame is well established so I'm not going to mention it.) The style and tone are very similar to the Series of Unfortunate Events - factual, a little spare, and with that grim glee. And, like the Unfortunate Events, Secret is totally lacking in character development. This is not to say it wasn't fun. The chatty narrative proceeds with a playful tone and tinkers with the standard format of narration. Near the end a couple of pages are lined and and without text so that you can write the chapter yourself. There's a false ending or two and chapters about the writing of the story instead of the story, and several mysteriously loose ends. (The narrator, for example, never explains who he is and how he knows about all this.)

However, the most distinctive component was the relentlessly efficient foreshadowing. Every plot turn was apparent two to three pages before I actually arrived there because of the precise planting of details. Sometimes I prefer a book that doesn't set it up so neatly. They don't have to tell me everything. Unexpected can be good. Revelations that I could not have foreseen are acceptable.

Alright. It looks like I have read nothing but novels for the last month. This is not so. There are four other books I have neglected to report, and only one of them was a novel, and it was meat not milk. I am not so reprobate as often appears. Patience please. There will be more entries to come over the next few days. By this time next week we'll be caught up. Pats on the back all around.