I read two novels this week - Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher (who does not look at all like Tom Cruise) and Jeffery Deaver's newest main character's first book.
Both feature strong, silent types with a variety of lethal skills and backstories worth exploring. Both men operate outside the law, in a Paladin role, rescuing the weak, restoring sanity to the universe, then moving on. Both authors write tight prose, construct surprising plots, and keep me coming back for me.
So, I was struck when, at about the same point in each book, the main characters encounter a feisty female police officer whose orders are the same: Thanks for the offer of help. Please leave town now, and don't come back.
Were Child and Deaver having drinks one night, concocting their plots, planning the overlap? Or is it merely coincidental?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I don't read either of them, so this is a guess; but a lot of big-name writers have ghost writers who do the actual writing. Author lays out general plot and ghost writer does the rest with, I assume, the big-name at least reading it. Anyway, if they had the same ghost writer, that could happen as writers have familiar patterns and details do get missed. Some ghost writers get tired of not getting any credit for their work and might even do that on purpose ;)
ReplyDeleteShit. I don't want to think about these authors not owning their own word . Thanks for the writer's insight.
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If you begin to feel a writer you have loved is not as good, it could be why. Some ghost writers are very good though and become authors on their own.
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