John Carr Dickson

-
A little more on this mystery writer.

Either Atlantic magazine or Harper's used to have (may still have) features in the back called "What Makes Good Writing Good" and "What Makes Bad Writing Bad." Each feature was short: one column, a few paragraphs. And the writer would take a piece of prose in each column and analyze what makes . . . well, you know.

Such a great little exercise, and I thought of it while reading The Three Coffins. There's something so . . . easy about his writing. Not lazy, not without interest, but it has a kind of swinging ease that is deceptively simple. Here's a short sample:

"The stuffy, gaudily coloured room was quiet. Wind rattled at the windows. Distantly there was a noise of church bells, and the honking of a taxi that passed and died. Hadley shook his notebook."

I like this because it's descriptive without being overly lyrical; specific ("stuffy," "rattled," "passed and died") without being precious or self-conscious; and genuinely rhythmical without being overwrought.

-