Plot Rant

I just finished listening to an audio book, a mystery/thriller thingie with an interesting, somewhat science-fictiony premise. The writing was on the high end of competent, and the characters held my interest, and the novel’s milieu was interesting and fresh, at least to me.

What finally broke my patience was the author’s method of building suspense, which was to have one of his characters do something bone-stupid in order to get into jeopardy.

We see this on TV all the time, where police routinely charge into villain-rich environments without calling for backup, or people poke sleeping monsters with sticks, or go into a dark cave in search of treasure and/or a kidnap victim. It makes me crazy when I see it on television, too.

As I’ve pointed out here, fictional characters are allowed to plausibly misunderstand the situation, or do the wrong thing out of stubbornness or loyalty or on account of some (plausibly foreshadowed) character flaw, but having the protagonist repeatedly violate established character, or routine procedure in the character’s profession, is something guaranteed to throw me out of the story.

One of the book’s protagonists was an academic, so it’s not surprising that she might panic or otherwise behave irrationally when involved in a deadly situation for which she was not prepared. But two others were law enforcement professionals, both of whom chose to ignore warnings that they were going to be stalked and killed. And then they (and the academic) chose to enter a spooky old house, complete with serial killer, without either calling for backup or even telling anyone where they were. And then they made even more bad decisions once they got inside the spooky old house.

Meanwhile I was muttering to myself, “You all have cell phones. Why aren’t you calling for help? Call for help! Call for help!” I muttered this for several chapters before I decided to regard the book as inept slapstick rather than a suspense novel.

(Jack Reacher gets into these situations all the time, but then he’s a drifter who doesn’t own a cellphone, or a gun, or a computer, or have law enforcement powers. That somehow makes it more plausible.)

I’m bored and frustrated by this sort of lazy plotting. I’m not demanding that protagonists be flawless superheroes, but they should at least do something intelligent once in a while. If you need suspense, have your protagonists do something smart, but have the bad guy do something smarter. Or the bad guy gets lucky. Or the bad guy reroutes his sinister plan around the obstacle and carries on.

See? Your book is probably better already.