The actual Blue Rose murders, which lie at the core of the three novels, yield various incorrect solutions which assume the status of truth.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When, in the third book, we do learn the identity of the Blue Rose murderer, the information comes in a muted, nearly off-hand manner, and the man has died long before.
I think novels are profoundly autobiographical. If writers deny that, they are lying. Or if it's really true, then I think it's a mistake.
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer.
The best crime novels are all based on people keeping secrets. All lying - you may think a lie is harmless, but you put them all together and there's a calamity.
The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth.
The novel and the film of 'The Color Purple' are both works of the imagination that make claim to historical truth.
When I started writing the third book, 'The Kill,' the intention was just to write a thriller, a crime novel for myself, really, in which there would be no body, no solution - where you would look at an event from different people's perspectives.
What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.
The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten.
No opposing quotes found.