Gray

[jhetley]

That seems to be the prevailing weather theme this year, don't it? Anyway, cloudy today with occasional fractured snowflakes wandering by. Supposed to get colder tomorrow and on through the week -- don't know if "they" have plans to offer us one of our Xmas Specials in the weather department, where the high for the day stays below zero F. On other years, the local temperatures have been higher in Maine than in, say, Atlanta, so you can flip a coin.

Printed off Chapter V this morning, get to start in on my protagonist's encounter with the local police chief. Some more friction there -- Chief seems to think Protag is the perp, not the victim....

I've been mulling over that Dresden book I mentioned before. I don't think I'm in danger of imitating it -- for one thing, Butcher seems to like having his hero get into deeper trouble by doing stupid things. I gave up on Sue Grafton because of that tendency. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin don't have to be dumb to drive the plot.

Comments

[ziactrice.livejournal.com]

I love Archie. Nero, well, of course he was brilliant, but only occasionally did I find the fat detective a sympathetic character.

But both of them were smart, in their own ways, and also both were intelligent enough to defer to each other's expertise - Wolfe to Goodwin regarding women, odds, and baseball, and Goodwin to Wolfe on unraveling the problem - although often Goodwin didn't need that much help. I loved the Against Mr. Z story, where Archie had constrained his private P.I. practice run while Wolfe went missing to making only twice what Wolfe had paid him before.