A few months ago, I got this box set for free from one of my book newsletters. I didn't even realize it was a bundle until I started it. And it's books 4-6, not even the first ones. I threw caution to the wind anyway and started reading them.
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The first book, Florida Shuffle, was OK. There were a couple of things I didn't like: the unsubtle bad guys and the switch between first and third-person mostly. Still, it was tolerable.
That book introduced me to the main character Will Harper, who is a semi-retired reporter who lives on a boat in Florida. He's sort of a super-cut-rate Travis McGee in that he solves crimes and lives on a boat. But instead of being a PI (or unlicensed PI) he's a reporter.
In that book, his girlfriend is named Callie. She worked at a halfway house or rehab place until her life was put in danger. When they flee to the Keys, Callie is almost killed twice but Will barely manages to save her.
At the end, a rich guy takes over the paper Will submits to and contracts him and Callie to write stories. He gives them a big expense account to do the stories they want. Hooray! The book ends with a pastor friend coming to them about three Guatemalan immigrants who have basically been forced into slavery after being smuggled into the US.
So now we get to the next book, Deadly Traffic, (after skipping through the end material of Book 1 and front material of Book 2, which is just really lazy; when you're doing a box set, have the good sense to trim most of that stuff off unless you have different authors or dedications or something) and that's where everything takes a swan dive. It's a couple of months later (but before the epilogue of the previous book) and Will has basically done nothing. Meanwhile, Callie is looking into stories but getting frustrated with Will's lack of direction. Since he's the big, somewhat famous writer, the story has to be his, but he doesn't want to do anything. He just wants to hang out on his boat, drinking and fucking.
So while in the previous book, when Callie wasn't working with Will, they got along pretty well, now that she's working with him (or supposed to be) they're bickering a lot. And Callie goes off to research stuff with a male editor at the paper while Will just hangs out on the boat. It's kind of a 180.
Even when we get back to the epilogue of the previous book and they find out about the Guatemalan immigrants, Will is somewhat reluctant to get involved. The silly thing then is all three immigrants are saved not by Will or his friends. One guy saves himself by hitting a dude with a rock and escaping a tomato farm. His sister who was forced to be a housekeeper for a rich guy escapes twice from him pretty much on her own; one of Will's friends gives her a ride the second time. Their younger sister is made a sex slave on a "party boat" and escapes thanks to a young crewman on the boat--and the Russian mob blowing the boat up at a convenient time.
It really doesn't make Will seem very heroic. But the thing is, since most of the book is told in first-person from Will's POV, we get his view of things, while not really getting Callie's side. We get third-person scenes in the POV of the immigrants and the bad guys but not Callie. So the book makes it seem like Callie is acting irrational and picking fights with him about getting to work and spending a lot of time with an editor at the paper and we, the audience are supposed to think she's in the wrong.
But I didn't! Will seemed like a lazy asshole to me most of the time. He didn't really seem to get that just because he's set with money and his career, Callie might not feel the same. Especially since she lost her job and was nearly killed by her former bosses twice in the last book. And when you're supposed to be the hero of the book, you should really get off your lazy ass and do something about the immigrants, not wait for them to save themselves.
When, like the original Spider-Man movies, Mary-Jane Callie is kidnapped again, Will's search for her is pretty lethargic. He and his former Army Ranger friend and former sea captain friend make sure to stop for meals and drinks. I mean, Callie could be getting beaten or raped, but why rush, right? That's what she deserves for dumping him, right?
In the end, Callie comes crawling back to him (why?) and he blows her off. Then he takes up with an old girlfriend in the next book while making horndog moves on Callie's research partner as just about every other woman in the book is throwing herself at him like he's emitting pheromones. And he continues rebuffing any attempts by Callie at reconciliation. I'm of course supposed to cheer Will for being such a player and putting that bitch Callie in her place, right? And, really, most of what Callie does in the last book is complain that he's keeping her frozen out of the story they're supposed to be working on. Which, again, I kinda gotta side with her; the editor assigned her to work with will and he's being a total dick going off with his new old girlfriend and keeping her in the dark. Really I'm not sure why Callie was in this at all because she didn't do much except continue to look bad.
The biggest irony then is he says in his narration how much he respects women. Um, yeah, buddy, maybe show us, don't tell us. Because you're showing a completely different attitude towards women than you're telling me. He only wants to be with Callie when she's not cramping his style by wanting him to do the job for which he would be paid. And also the job that would actually help people. If she even mildly threatens his cozy lifestyle then push her away. And then claim that she's the one who broke it off. Maybe she did, but only because you were pushing her away! It never occurs to him (or I guess the author) that she wouldn't have been working with an editor at the paper if Will had gotten off his ass to work with her.
It was very frustrating as the reader because clearly my opinion differed from the author's in regards to who was in the wrong and who was in the right. The author thought I would share his latent sexism and think, "Bitches be crazy!" And/or, "He saved her life twice and she repays him by wanting a career and to help people in trouble? Pshaw!"
It reminded me of when I read the 4th book of the Miss Peregrine series, which I wrote about in this entry almost a year ago. In the first three books Jacob and a girl named Emma with pyrotechnic powers became a couple and everything was fine. But in the 4th book when they go back in time to the 60s for a brief time, Emma contacts Jacob's grandpa, whom she dated back in the 40s. When Jacob finds out, he drops Emma like a hot potato. Which seemed really weird that he was so completely unforgiving and completely lacked empathy of her situation. I mean, so she wanted to talk to the other guy she loved again, wouldn't most people do the same thing? As I say in the article, mostly I think it was to clear Emma out of the way to set up a new girlfriend for Jacob.
I didn't really understand the sudden change with Callie. Why would the author do this to his own character? Sometimes there is a reason for it like in the Miss Peregrine book. Or like in the Scarlet Knight books, Becky is angry with Emma through most of the 3rd and 4th books but that's because she blames Emma for her fiancé being murdered. When they swap bodies in the 4th book, they work through their difficulties and become friends again. But in this case there seemed no point to making Callie such a bitch all the sudden. It was like the author didn't want to write about her anymore and just decided to make her as unappealing as possible. Or maybe she was based on a real person the author had fallen out with so he did this out of spite. But like the title of the entry says, it was like he was assassinating his own character's character! And since I didn't hate the character as much as the author did, it really struck me as wrong. It was even worse than in the Miss Peregrine book because Callie's whole personality basically changed from one book to the next.
This is a danger in writing first-person (at least in part): you might like your character and think what they're doing is right, but I might not. I know some people had this problem with Where You Belong where they didn't like Frost because he was too passive--which he was supposed to be; a big part of the story is about him learning to stand on his own and find where he belongs. But the point is just because you and your character agree on something, doesn't mean I, the reader, will agree with it. In the case of Where You Belong, I knew what I was doing, but in this case, I'm pretty sure it was unintentional.
In some stories I write in first-person, the main character isn't supposed to be a good guy--or at least not at first. Or you have other books like American Psycho where obviously the main character isn't someone you're supposed to sympathize with. But this was a case where there was a clear disconnect that the author didn't intend.
It's another good reason to have someone else read your stories. Maybe it doesn't have to be someone who completely disagrees with you politically and socially, but you really need someone who can see that other side and how people might view things.
But of course this has hundreds of positive ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, so I guess most people don't really care. It's probably different when you are an author and thus are probably more sensitive to sudden changes with characters.
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