[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #45 - September 2007 [spoilers]

Martin Phipps martinphipps2 at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 8 10:59:19 PST 2007


On Nov 8, 11:11 am, Tom Russell <milos_par... at yahoo.com> wrote:

> The first being that the "Mystery of the Two Green Knights" wasn't
> much of a mystery, really.  By sticking to Martin's point of view, and
> showing the reader only those things that Martin would know, the
> reader is given no clues as to Derek's identity previous to this
> installment.  Again, keeping focused on Martin was a choice I made
> deliberately, because the first eleven issues of Jolt City are not
> about the Green Knight putting Samson Snapp behind bars, but about
> Martin Rock.  It's a psychological journey, and so it had to be, to my
> mind, focused inwardly and on one person.
>
> But in doing so, I hadn't really laid the groundwork for a big payoff/
> reveal at the end of the eleventh issue, and so it wasn't really a
> mystery story; if I had played it that way, I would be guilty of the
> same literary crime of which I have accused others.  So, instead, I
> played it the Columbo route: I let the reader know upfront who it is,
> and the tension that arises is not centered around who but rather when
> and how-- when and how is Martin going to figure it out?

In all fairness, I wouldn't have considered it a "cheat" if you hadn't
revealed until the very end who Martin's "friend" was.  There weren't,
after all, a long list of suspects (although I was under the
impression that Derek hated the Green Knight --and not without good
reason I might add).  It seems to me that in order to maintain
suspense one does have to stick to a single point of view.  Isn't that
what you yourself were trying to say when you told Wil that in order
to maintain suspense one shouldn't "leave the room"?

Anyway, I personally prefer writing ensemble pieces, but there's
always the danger of course that a couple of characters are going to
get short shifted in terms of development and somebody is going to
accuse them of being "interchangable". :)

Martin




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