Finding New Authors: Barry Maitland and Elizabeth Moon 4/21/2010

 This place has a library, pretty well stocked with crime and science fiction novels. I find it still a bit difficult to read - my mind slips off the page to the only important event left me, my sentencing. (For some reason, it affects my writing less.) My response has been pretty much to stick to with writes I have read before. I also think that, like with people, I do not feel comfortable starting a relationship with a new author.

My exceptions have been Barry Maitland's The Chalon Heads, and Elizabeth Moon's Marque and Reprisal.I enjoyed both - even if neither were new.

I do not have Maitland's book at hand, but I believe it was the third in a series. Where did the series go? I thought the plotting devilishly clever, the characters interesting enough to keep my attention (they seemed like co-workers - competitive and cooperative at the same time) throughout. I read P.D. James' Death in a Religious Order about the same time, and found Maitland an easier read.  James seems a bit too dense and [her detective] Dagliesh too pale for me to find either terribly endearing. I think Maitland owed more to James than to Ed McBain.

Marque and Reprisal gives us a space opera heroine in a taut tale with solid writing. Since Honor Harrington has gone off to a higher state of being and her related books freighted with an ever-expanding mythos, I think Moon ought to get a wider reading.

Since I cannot pick myself up and go forth to the bookstore or Wikipedia, I have no idea what became of Maitland, or his series. I know Moon still writes (I seem to recall seeing her on baen.com), but not what became of this series. 

Those thinking incarceration is not a big deal might want to ponder how they might like this bit of liberty gone from their lives.

sch