Predictable

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I’ve just finished reading a book that was extremely well-written but painfully predictable. I’m not going to name the book or the author, partly out of respect and partly because I don’t want her ripping my work to pieces at a later date.

It opened with the discovery of a body, female, of course, abducted, raped, strangled and left in a signature pose by the killer. After a second identical murder victim has a common contact in her phone book, a man is arrested on circumstantial evidence.

You’ve probably already guessed that while this man is in custody another victim is found. If I go on to tell you that the investigating officer has a daughter of the same age and at the same college as the other victims, I think you know what else is coming.

The investigating officer is taken off the case but, of course, insists on pursuing every lead. Her daughter stops answering her phone at the exact moment the detective realises that one of her daughter's friends is the killer and she arrives with perfect timing, to find her daughter bound and drugged, but otherwise miraculously unharmed.

I do hope that my writing isn’t so painfully predictable. This is why I like Stephen King; he creates original scenarios, generates an emotional attachment between the reader and a character, then slaughters them! 

I still haven’t forgiven him for the young blind girl getting stabbed in Langoliers!

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