"You know what? The bastard blows me out of the water. This guy writes Maine like Ardai writes New York. If you're not reading him, you don't know what you're missing." --Chris F. Holm, author of "The Collector" series, The Killing Kind, and Red Right Hand.

"A refreshingly new voice in noir." --Ed Kurtz, author of Nothing You Can Do and The Rib From Which I Remake the World.

"A glorious boilermaker of noir and East Coast gothic. The action is taut as a sprung snare and Bagley tightens the screws with every page." -- Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase and Blood Standard.




Sunday, June 29, 2008

Word Count Wisdom, or The Book's As Long As It Needs To Be

“Guys like Harry Wittington and Jim Thompson could tell a story in less than two hundred pages. They didn’t need six hundred like everybody seems to now. And they were good stories, let me tell you. Not like most of this bloated stuff you read now.”
—Clyde Ballinger in Death on the Move, ©1989 by Bill Crider

3 comments:

mybillcrider said...

That Clyde Ballinger is a sharp cookie.

Stephen Blackmoore said...

Amen, brother.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I have never read a long book that didn't seem like it could have been shorter. Leave them wanting more.