What Should a Review Be?

 

My introduction to the publishing industry came through reviewing books for the New Mystery Reader web site. I’d won an advanced reader’s copy of Elmore Leonard’s The Hot Kid in a contest run by HarperCollins, on the condition I write a review for them. I forwarded the result to Stephanie Padilla, the editor of NMR. She liked it enough to bring me on board. Thank you, Stephanie. Everything that happened since is your fault. 😊

I’d never done reviews before, so I did some research into what should be in them. The best advice I found was that a review should tell a prospective reader if the book passes the $25 test. (Of course it’s more now.) The reviewer’s primary job is to help readers decide if the book is worth spending their money, and time, on. (I wish I remembered who said that, but it was a long time ago and I’m old. In fact, today I’m officially older than I was yesterday. I better go lie down.)

Okay, I’m back. Keeping the “Twenty-five Dollar Rule” in mind, what should be in a review? As you might expect, I have ideas.

First, a brief synopsis of the story. Very brief. Do not divulge any plot twists or too much about the characters; “no spoilers” doesn’t apply only to the end of a book. There are many things that happen along the way readers should be able to enjoy without knowing they’re coming.

That’s why I generally don’t read the back covers of books. Many years ago my eyes accidentally came to rest on the back cover of Scott Phillips’s excellent novel Cottonwood, where I learned what was going to happen in the next chapter. It was something I never would have expected; now it was ruined. Don’t tell any more about the story than you have to for readers to know what kind of book it is. It’s a review, not a book report.

Brief excerpts are fine, so long as they don’t spoil anything. It can come in handy to give readers an example of something you particularly liked, or disliked. It allows them to make up their own minds should their tastes and yours not coincide.

This is especially true if you’re inclined to talk about the quality of the writing. I focus on this when I still do the occasional review, as I read less for the story than for how well it’s told. I enjoy a decent story that’s well-written far more than a fantastic story told to ham-handedly. (Of course, there are limits to how bad the story can be.)

You can also do prospective readers a favor by breaking down the craft for them a little. How dialog-heavy is the book? How good is the dialog? How much description is there? How good is it? Are the characters well drawn? What’s the pace? How much disbelief needs to be suspended, and how often? How much internal dialog is there? Is it used effectively? How violent is the book? How funny? Is it truly funny, or is the author merely trying to be funny? How tight is the writing?

I could go on, but you get the point. A proper review should not be a few paragraphs of story summary followed by one about whether you liked the book. Readers deserve more. (And less, when potential spoilers are involved.) We’ve all seen movie trailers that ruined the movie because they gave too much away. Don’t do that with your review.

The Voices in My Head

 I’ve known Charlie Stella for over ten years, and I’m lucky to be able to call him a friend. He was largely responsible for my first publishing contract, and has been a tireless supporter of my writing, and of me, for years. He and his lovely wife, Ann Marie, drove overnight from Fords NJ to Oakmont PA to attend the launch of Grind Joint. (He did forget the cannoli, though. I was a big enough man to forgive him.) Charlie is a force of nature with a heart as big as Yellowstone. 

 

I thought I knew him pretty well until I read his new book, The Voices in My Head: A Fictional Memoir. I knew he’d been working on it for quite a while, so I figured there was some serious introspection and unpacking going on, but I had no idea how much, or of what. 

 

Let me start by saying The Voices in My Head is an accomplishment. I could never have written anything like this, and not just because my upbringing was so much more tranquil. Leaving himself out there as he has, with no apologies nor justifications, took balls I can’t imagine. He pulls no punches about his affection for his late mother, nor the unconditional love she had for him. His father, not so much.

 

What struck me more than anything were the similarities he and I share, such as loves for music and baseball. More specifically, we shared a love of Mahler’s First Symphony when we met; I like to think it was I who introduced him to Mahler 2, which Charlie quotes beautifully, poignantly, and effectively in Voices.  

 

We also share general insecurities that display themselves in what is probably Imposter’s Syndrome. All of that and more gave me a natural empathy for the main character. Knowing it was Charlie, and seeing the painful ways in which our lives diverged from our commonalities, made this a hard book to read at times.  

 

Writers often talk about the courage it took to write something when they really mean they’re going to say something that will make people uncomfortable, and may not be a popular opinion. This book took actual courage. As memoirs go, there’s no titillation nor dishing. Except for his father, everyone else comes off Sympathetically, the author accepting responsibility for past differences or hurts. I came away wishing young Charlie could have read it as he was going through the events described, to caution him as to where his decisions would lead. Too late for that, there are still a lot of people who will benefit from exactly such a reading.

 

SAMCRO

The Beloved Spouse™ and I completed watching all seven seasons of Sons of Anarchy last weekend. I should have reviewed each season separately; I didn’t. Here’s the Campbell’s version. (Condensed.)

(There are at least the hints of spoilers here.)

Production Values

Outstanding. SOA must have been a high-budget show by FX standards, as the budget for fake blood alone must have run five figures a week. I’m not a vroom-vroom guy by modern standards, but I got into the fishtailing cars and motorcycles darting in between traffic. Full marks.

Acting

Generally good. I’ve been a Jimmy Smits fan for years but this was a revelation. His expressions and little mannerisms helped to make Nero the most compelling character in the show for me.

Katey Sagal was very good as Gemma, but the character wore thin after a while, as there are only so many ways to spin Cruella DeVil’s evil sister. By the time she did get to do something with more depth, her acceptance of her fate wasn’t credible. I kept waiting for her to try one more lie. In fairness, that’s not Katey’s fault, it’s the writers’. More on that later.

Dayton Callie maintained the same core of humanity as he did with Charlie Utter in Deadwood, and remained one of the few characters worth rooting for.

Charlie Hunnam was solid as Jax, though he never quite got the hang of the American R at the end of words.

Ron Perlman was born to be Clay. I read several places that they shot much of the pilot with Scott Glenn in the role. I love Scott Glenn—and not just because he’s from Pittsburgh—but Perlman is Clay Morrow.

Writing

Uneven. Season One’s dialog lacked life, but as the years moved along the banter and offhand humor between characters improved; maybe Kurt Sutter started watching Justified.

Action was too often a substitute for suspense. Good as the action was, new story lines sprung up and ran their course faster than erections in a whorehouse. Problems that arose ten minutes into an episode resolved themselves by the forty-minute mark, usually in a hail of gunfire.

That brings us to the show’s two greatest failings: timelines and credibility. The Sons—especially Jax—go from mayhem to mayhem at least twice a day. There were time when they stopped off to kill someone on their way to killing someone else. Star Trek doesn’t move people around with transporters any faster. One memorable scene has Jax and the Sons at the marina. Bad guys show up to blow up the boat. The Sons see them. The bad guys split. The Sons give chase, except for Jax and Clay, who still have business at the boat. Next thing we see is Jax leading the pursuit. This is but the most memorable occurrence of a common practice.

What really got me, and finally wore down TBS, is the things that just can’t happen. Twice the Sons are thisclose to going down on a RICO beef based on the testimony of a single witness. RICO cases take years, under the best of circumstances. Trial dates move forward or back to suit the plot. The DA orders around sheriff’s deputies; we never see, or even hear from, the sheriff. All feds are even more vicious and duplicitous than any of the MCs. Or the Taliban, for that matter. About the closest the show gets to actual police procedure is using telephones to speak into. It wore me down after a while.

The weaving of multiple plot thread in Season Seven was outstanding in how they were woven together to credibly solve two problems in one fell swoop. The ending had a certain elegance, as well, though the final chase scene too way too long and the final shot was maudlin. (SOA could have benefitted from a Sopranos ending as Jax raised his arms before driving into the truck.)

There are plenty of other things to talk about in a show that ran seven years. With a few exceptions they’d be more of the same. The show took a detour to Ireland in Season Three and never quite found its way after that. As The Guardian said, “when it existed in its own self-contained Stateside world of dive bars, strip clubs and motorcycle clubhouses, Sons of Anarchy was just fine.” SAMCRO* came back from the auld sod less about mayhem—which is fine—and more about gratuitous bloodletting. The offbeat charm was gone.

I’m not sorry I watched Sons of Anarchy, but I was ready for it to be over and see no need to watch it again. TBS and I started right into to re-watching Justified. The difference between SOA and Justified is that one watches Sons to see what’s going to happen and one watches Justified to enjoy what’s happening.

Three stars of five.

(*--Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Originals.)

Reviews

Reviews have come to be thought of as almost synonymous with “marketing,” which is a shame. True, a good review from a trusted source can be helpful in generating interest, but the current algorithm tends to equate volume of reviews with merit. That’s not only a mistake, it’s potentially dangerous.

First we’ll talk about reviews from trusted sources. Dead End Follies recently reviewed Bad Samaritan and had quite a bit to say, both good and not so good. What I like best about it is that Benoit Lelievre takes a stand on what the book is about. He doesn’t just rehash the plot and conclude with “I liked it,” or “I didn’t like it,” or “It was okay.” He invited readers to draw their own conclusions and go a few rounds with him. (“I'm simplifying here, but if you read the novel in its entirety, I'd be glad to debate its representation of women via email.”)

In short, the review is fair and thought-provoking, at least for me. The overall assessment is encouragingly neutral. (“Not bad. File this one as ‘interestingly flawed’, but it could've definitely been a lot worse.”) It’s in the particulars where the review is most worthy.

On one hand, Lelievre appreciates the depictions of the kinds of violence women have to routinely deal with. On the other, he’s less than satisfied that the confrontations are mainly between protagonist Nick Forte and the men’s rights advocates and other cowards who ate the book’s antagonists. That’s a fair criticism. Forte has shown issues with the treatment of women in other books, and I wrote this to show how his preferred resolutions have become more violent as his personality grows darker. The problems are two-fold:

1. It’s extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to reasonably portray this issue from the perspective of a man who feels compelled to interject himself as the solution every time he perceives an injustice toward a woman.

2. It’s too much. All of the subplots involve the same issue, and Forte’s attempted resolutions are too similar. It gives him too much credit to call what he does “resolutions.” His heart’s in the right place, but he’s an oaf, doing things for his own reasons that may or may not result in the resolution the woman prefers, whether she appreciates his “help” or not.

This is a review that clearly passes the $25 test. (The key element of any review is to help a potential reader decide if the book is worth $25? Or $15, or $30. Whatever it costs.) It also gives readers—and the author—things to think about based on what’s in the book. I follow Dead End Follies regularly. Its purpose is to try to raise the level on internet criticism. To me, he’s going about it the right way.

Now let’s contrast that with passes for internet criticism more all the time: online reviews. This is a difficult subject because I’m close to touching the third rail for authors: arguing with a reviewer. I’m trying to make a point, though, so bear with me.

Benoit Lelievre did me a solid by posting an Amazon review distilled from what he wrote in Dead End Follies. He gave the book three stars and said: File this one as "interestingly flawed.” BAD SAMARITAN is a fundamentally sound detective story that's somewhat bogged down by an overbearing theme. Its heart is at the right place and it wants to expose violence against women, but it's more about male's perception of the problem than about the problem itself.

It's appropriately funny and goofy at times, it's a classic case of a book trying to do too much.

 Again, a fair assessment with which I have no issue.

There’s another three-star review directly beneath it.

Story felt too rushed and didn’t flow well.

I voluntarily read an advanced copy.

Let me start by saying I take no issue with the criticism. This reviewer isn’t the first to say I get in and out too quickly. (Fortunately my wife is not among them.) It’s just that that’s all there is.

First, I am not aware of anyone who forces people to read advance copies, so saying one “voluntary read” the book is, at best, a pleonasm. Given the disclaimer is 42% of the total review, it can safely be said not a lot of thought went into the rest of it. This strikes me more like someone who’s trolling for free books. I checked—because investigations are what I write about—and found no fewer than eleven reviews posted in the previous week.

Really? What level of thought can have gone in to any of them? Why even bother to write them up, unless there’s some frequent reviewers award you’re gunning for?

I don’t mean to hold civilian reviewers to the same standard I hold the pros. I also don’t mean to compare this review to those one-star pieces of shit some give because they didn’t like the cover or thought the book was too expensive or found a typo. Still. Online reviews are supposed to provide a service and not just provide yet another forum for onanistic proclamations. Maybe Amazon needs some review standards beyond checking for foul language and looking to see if the author is a friend of the reviewer. Maybe there should be a standard before any review is acceptable.

What should it be? Twenty-five words? Fifty? Fuck if I know. I’m the author. My job is to get people to think, not tell them what to think. This small sample shows a failure in both regards. The review I care about showed me I was too busy trying to tell people what to think. The second implied I didn’t get that reader to think at all.

The Second Girl, by David Swinson

It doesn’t mean much to me when a writer signs a deal with a major publisher. The publisher typically has dreams of a best-seller and I don’t generally care for best sellers. I’m happy for the writer, as I’m in favor of anything that gets a writer paid and doesn’t involve potential prison time. I’m just not likely to read the book.

Hold that thought.

I first became aware of David Swinson at Bouchercon in Long Beach, where I saw him on a panel and made a note that this guy has more on the ball than most. I hadn’t got around to reading his first book, A Detailed Man, by the time I got to Raleigh last year, where I saw him on another panel just as educational and thought-provoking, but did score an advanced reader’s copy of The Second Girl. The big publishers—in this case Mulholland—don’t fool around. They held events at Bouchercon a full eight months before the book was to drop. They expected big things.

Much as it pains me to agree with a large publisher, they were right to think so. The Second Girl is a hell of a book.

Frank Marr is a former Washington DC cop with a problem. Several, actually, but the one that keeps him jumping in his new job as private investigator is his cocaine habit. PI work doesn’t pay enough to keep Frank in the quantity and quality of drugs to which he’d like to become accustomed so he rips off drug dealers to make up the difference. It’s on one of these covert raids he discovers a teen-aged girl chained in a bathroom. Marr’s a drug abuser and kind of an asshole, but he’s not a bad person. He rescues the girl while concocting a story about how he came across her that won’t incriminate him.

Bad luck for Frank: now he’s a hero. Another family with a missing daughter hears the story and begs him to help them. He doesn’t want to but can’t help himself and agrees. Actually, he can’t help himself from helping himself, as what he has to do to get the second girl back draws on all his expertise—legitimate and otherwise—and shows him in concrete ways where his life has gone off the rails.

Swinson has an economical style that tells Marr’s story without apology or self-justification. He’s the kind of anti-hero that could require a book of its own to do justice. A good guy with many bad habits and tendencies, he wavers and often does as much as his conscience demands, only to find his conscience has been only temporarily satisfied and wants more. The internal and external struggles compete without a hint of melodrama.

I’m also not much for awards discussions, but if The Second Girl doesn’t receive substantial notice at awards time next year, it’s prima facie evidence the various bodies are even more clueless than I suspected. This is a substantial and relevant book that is still entertaining, and David Swinson is a writer to whom we should all pay much attention in the coming years.

They Call Me Mr. Sunshine

Every month I bore you with post a list of the best books I read the previous month, with brief, usually one-paragraph, reviews. At the beginning of every year, not satisfied that the first promulgation of my personal literary prejudices was sufficiently irritating, I publish the best books I read that year. Not the best books launched in that year; the best books I read. My wheels grind exceeding slow at times, and I am rarely a slave to fashion or cultural pacing. I read what I want, when I want.

What I don’t do is tell you what books I didn’t like. Some question this. (Actually, no one has had the nerve to ask me directly, but I’ve seen it done.) “Don’t readers have a right to know about the books you don’t like, so they know what to avoid?”

No, they don’t. Not from me specifically, anyway.

There are plenty of assholes willing to post a one-star review of books they haven’t finished because they didn’t like the foul language or the cat getting run over or the graphic violence. I never have a one-star review to post, because books that appear to be moving into One Star Land don’t get finished, and I don’t feel it’s fair to review—or even rate—a book I didn’t finish. Call me fussy, but there is always the chance the book could redeem itself. That chance might not be sufficient for me to continue, but my lack of patience should not be construed as an absolute and accurate arbiter of taste. I only rate books I finish.

I also only review and rate books I can comfortably give at least four stars. Part of the reason is, I finish between 60 and 70 books in an average year, and I don’t have time to do justice to all of them. I’d rather do fewer reviews than do them half-assed. There are so many deserving books that don’t get the marketing support to let them peek above the dreck for even a few minutes that I want to spend my reviewing time providing whatever miniscule assistance I can where it’s most warranted. In addition, every minute I’d spend ripping a book is a minute I could have spent reading or reviewing something I could be enthusiastic about, and life’s too short to read books you don’t like.

(As has been noted, I am willing to rip movies I don’t like. Why the double standard? Because even a relatively small movie has more marketing support and money behind it than most novels released in a year combined. I have no problem with pointing out those naked emperors because my voice is a mouse squeaking in a hurricane compared to the volume of bloviated bullshit any studio can pump up about this year’s Batman/Spiderman/Avengers reboot. So movies are on their own.)

As a writer, I can’t afford to read solely for entertainment anymore. (A post on that is coming.) That doesn’t mean every book I read shouldn’t entertain me at some level. (“Engage” can be substituted for “entertain.” The entertainment level of Max Hastings’s brilliant history of World War II, Inferno, could never be described as entertaining, but it was fascinating from cover to cover.) Now that I read as both a reader and a writer, the book has to interest both. If I choose to do a review, I owe the prospective reader my honest opinion about whether this book meets the $25 test. As a writer, I owe my peers an honest appraisal. I owe it to myself to spend as little time on shitty books as possible.

What’s a Review?

Yesterday was whack job Amazon reviewer day, where people went out of their way to ruin the reputation of an already barely credible institution.

First I learned of a “review” of John McNally’s America’s Score Card. I placed quotes around the review because it was really a personal attack on McNally in the guise of a review, even going so far as to drag another member of the Wake Forest faculty into the mud, though the review of that author was even more vicious. (Full disclosure: John McNally was my teacher at George Washington University’s Jenny Moore McKean Workshop in the spring of 2002 and has encouraged my writing ever since.) The reviewer came across as either someone who had been denied admission into Wake’s MFA program, or a student whose literary genius had yet to be accepted by his professors. Either way, the review told us nothing about the book or McNally’s writing, though it spoke volumes about what a whiny douche bag the reviewer was.

Not half an hour later I read of a somewhat similar attack on the anthology The Lost Children. The book consists of thirty stories; the proceeds will aid Scottish children. That’s apparently not good enough for one reviewer, who had nothing to say about the stories or the writing because she hadn’t read the book. Won’t buy it, because the proceeds go only to Scottish children, who, she asserts, already have it pretty well. Why not include Irish or Welsh kids, while they’re at it? Why be so discriminatory?

As someone else pointed out on Facebook, why stop there? Why limit the generosity to the British Isles? Why not include French kids (petit grenouilles, as they’re called in France)? Spanish? Why stop with Europe? Kids need help in Africa and Asia even more. Let’s dilute the gesture so thin it benefits no one and decry it for what it is not—a panacea—instead of celebrating what it is.

This is why I so rarely read or submit Amazon reviews: you play with pigs, you get dirty. There are a lot of well-intentioned people writing Amazon reviews. There are also people shilling for friends and relatives (and themselves, if they’re clever enough), as well as those who will give a book one star because they don’t think any e-book should cost more than $1.99. Then there are the [insert disparaging term of your choice] like the two mentioned above, with axes to grind who have been provided a forum without fear of any real consequences.

I used to write a lot of reviews. I occasionally still do, for books I like. After struggling with the issue for some time, I was led by several reviewers wiser than I to a simple conclusion. The only reason to write a review is to help others decide if the book is worth their time and money. Period. All reviews are subject to the reviewers tastes and experience; all opinions  expressed should be justified in writing. Personal opinions about the author should be sublimated as much as possible. When in doubt, identify them. (The author has been a friend of mine for twenty years. I think the author is a vile glob of pig’s vomit.) Let the reader know how much to discount your opinions.

The key to a good review is always to remember it is not a soapbox, nor it is a forum to show how superior and/or clever you are. Reviews are to help the reader to decide if this book is worth the money. If you can’t do that honestly and with fair intentions, don’t go public. If you don’t like the book, by all means say so, but show what it was about the book that doesn’t work. The reviewer’s conclusions should be supported at least as much as the author’s, especially when reviewing fiction, where the author is permitted a fair amount of license.

And for God’s sake don’t spoil it. Too many reviews are book reports, basically plot summaries with a paragraph at the end to say if the reviewer thought everything held together. Lay out the premise, critique the writing and how well things work, and let the reader find out what happens. There’s more to enjoying a book than the ending.

Wild Bill at Temporary Knucksline

The first review of Wild Bill has come in, thanks to Charlie Stella (Johnny Porno, Shakedown, Cheapskates) through his always thought-provoking blog, Temporary Knucksline. Charlie was even thoughtful enough to provide his own blurbable excerpt:

Action packed, loaded with Higgins-like dialogue and clever, Leonard-like plotting, Wild Bill is more than a sure footed debut … it’s wonderful, a GREAT read.

To read Charlie’s entire review, click here. Take advantage of the links to pick up one of Charlie’s books while you’re there. If you like Wild Bill, you’ll love Charlie’s stuff.

Many thanks to Charlie, not least for his generous offer to allow me to co-write an anthology with him. Details to follow.

After Further Review

I started writing book reviews for New Mystery Reader in 2005, and will forever be grateful to Stephanie Padilla for the opportunity and encouragement she provided. At least half of the authors I read now became known to me through books I was asked to review, including many of my favorites. (John Connolly, Timothy Hallinan, and Declan Hughes jump to mind; there are several others.)

I've been on hiatus for a few months, and I think it's going to continue. The fact is, a lot of books that get published have many of the same strengths and weaknesses, and it got harder all the time to say the same things in different, and (hopefully) entertaining ways. I also found I was more quickly losing interest in books I didn't care for, which made going through to the end more of a chore than it should be.

Those things pushed me to take a break; what's keeping me from going back are the writers. I've been lucky enough to become friendly with fairly broad range of writers, from reading each others' blogs and trading comments on web sites such as Crimespace. Some I became friendly with after I reviewed their books and followed up with an interview. This was all well and good and fun, until a thought came to me one day:

What do I do when I get one of their books for review and I don't think much of it?

It's bound to happen. No offense to any of my writer friends, but I've read books by Elmore Leonard and said, "meh." The easy answer is, you tell the truth in an honest and straightforward manner, and they'll understand. They're writers. They know how it works. I've read uncomplimentary comments about my writing and not felt differently about the commenter. It's not a criticism of them as a person, it's the writing we have a difference about.

Still, I'm not going to do it, for the best reason I can think of: I don't want to.

It's not like I'm Jonathan Yardley or Michiko Kakutani. I'm not making a living at it, and people aren't subscribing to feeds with breathless anticipation of my next literary pronouncement. I owe readers an honest evaluation, and I'd be reluctant to give it to them if it meant I had to disparage a friend's work. So I won't. I'll read for the entertainment, and to learn a little, and I'll do my monthly "Good Reads" posts with single paragraph comments of books I liked. If I don't like a book, no one needs to know I read it.

The less seriously I take this whole writing business, the more I like it.

Reviewing the Reviews

Book reviews have received a lot of attention lately, largely been because newspapers are dropping them faster than a banker can endorse a bonus check. Various web sites are picking up the slack. Most online booksellers post reader reviews, which may be of dubious merit. Some are written by the writer’s friends; others may be written by competitors with an ax to grind before placing it directly between the author’s shoulder blades.

Other sites dedicated to the review and discussion of books and writing. Some are strictly amateur affairs, and show it. Some are the work of dedicated volunteers whose quality of product is hardly amateurish. Still others are professional operations deserving the respect previously accorded only to the traditional print media.

As the primordial ooze of Twenty-First Century book criticism sorts itself out, another, often ignored question comes to mind: what is a book review? Based on what I’ve read, some are little more than plot synopses, with a brief coda to say, “It’s okay,” or “Don’t bother.” Others are more like book reports, summarizing the story, discussing a theme or two, and maybe concluding with a recommendation.

Another category discusses the writing, and its various strengths and weaknesses. These can also be a mixed bag. Some are little more than opinion pieces without example or justification, telling more about the reviewer than about the book. Others cite examples to back up their opinions, though even those who strive to be objective are prone to cherry-pick only citations that support their opinions.

Authors, readers, and reviewers all read this blog. What do you look for in a review? What are the primary reasons for having book reviews at all? If we can stipulate all reviews should pass the Twenty-Five Dollar test (Is this book worth $25?), should the reader expect more than a synopsis and recommendation?

Everyone's a Critic. Or Should Be.

As the heading says, I am a humble writer, with much to be humble about. What accomplishment I can point to is largely due to the encouragement and support of Stephanie Padilla, the editor of New Mystery Reader. Through a series of questionable decisions probably attributable to sleep deprivation, Stephanie has seen fit to publish over eighty of my reviews, four short stories, four author interviews, and an appreciation of the late Ed McBain.

In addition to the much appreciated writing credits, producing reviews has definitely made me a better fiction writer. All writers must develop critical reading skills, both to learn what works and to unmask what doesn’t. That’s not news; everyone who read this far knows that. What writing reviews does—or should do—is force you to justify your opinions.

Declan Burke speaks a little of this at Crime Always Pays. To wit:

[Crime fiction as a genre] deserves more from me, certainly, than reviews that run along the lines of, “This is a great book because I liked it and I liked it because it’s a great book.”

No point asking how many of you have read reviews like the one he describes; we all have. Written by well-known reviewers for major publications, too. Maybe that’s enough for the casual reader who wants to be sure the body count meets his standard. Serious readers—and anyone wishing to call himself a writer must, of necessity, be a serious reader—need more. Speaking personally, I can forgive plot holes if I’m enjoying the trip; the more enjoyable the trip, the more holes I can tolerate. True, a point can be reached where there are so many holes the fabric of the story doesn’t hold together no matter how entertaining the reading, but a book that reads more like a chore than a pleasure had better be damn near perfect in its plot.

This is where proper criticism can step up. A bit of synopsis is needed; the reader may be able to eliminate a book from his potential To Be Read pile by that alone, and a reviewer’s first duty is to that reader and her twenty-five bucks. The synopsis alone is but a recitation of facts; a book report. At best, it can tell a reader whether a book is worth reading at all, when placed in conjunction with the reader’s tastes. The reviewer’s real value comes from explaining why, or why not, the reader should invest time and money.

It’s not enough to say you liked the characters; why did you like them? What is it makes them people you enjoyed spending several hours with in the already crowded confines of your head? Did the dialog help or hurt? How? Why? Justify everything. If you think the banter between Parker, Louis, and Angel brings John Connolly’s books alive in a similar manner to the interplay between Spenser and Hawk, then don’t settle for “I liked the dialog. It was good.” Make the comparison. Reversing the situation, if the author is writing in the style of someone else and doesn’t quite pull it off, say so. But tell where he falls short.

This is not an altruistic endeavor; it will improve your fiction. Having to justify your opinions in writing forces you to examine them. This constant re-evaluation can only deepen your comprehension of your strengths and weaknesses, and, hopefully, help you to understand whether to leverage a strength, improve a weakness, or find another way to write a troublesome passage.

Reviewing makes you read for a different level of comprehension, as well as to improve your expressiveness of that new level of appreciation. Opportunities are not scarce; the proliferation of online venues means you should be able to find an outlet. Too busy to add another obligation to your plate? Write them for yourself when you want to think more on a recently read book. Have fun with it. Write it up as a conversation. Compile comments on several books into a manifesto of your writing philosophy.

All writers, especially new ones, search for the voice that will tell their stories in their unique way. How do find that voice—or voices, as different stories may demand different methods—is always vexing. It may be impossible without a more complete knowledge of your own tastes and abilities than can be obtained by reading along. Law school has been said to sharpen the mind by narrowing it; reviewing may sharper your skills by examining them.