The other day I posted an opening from Ross Macdonald that used the weather to set the atmosphere of his novel. At the book sale today I picked up Loren D. Estleman's, "The Witchfinder". In his opening he used the weather to help portray his character, Amos Walker.
"There are mornings, just after dawn on unseasonably hot June days when every breath you draw is filtered through forty pounds of wet laundry, that you welcome the clear cold icicle of the telephone bell ringing.
You sit on the edge of your bed for a while waiting for the overcast to clear, uncertain whether you were preparing to rise or retire, then the ringing comes again, an hour behind the first, and you get up and squish out into the living room where the air from the open window chills you in your damp underwear, and the second ring is just ending. Everything you hear and see and do is at quarter-speed. It's a kind of brownout of the brain."
Yeah, I love seeing how writers can use the weather in a story and not turn it into a weather report. :) This is the second Estleman I've managed to find and I'm looking forward to diving in.
4 comments:
Mr. Estleman is a favorite, Sandra. His stories in AHMM are always the first I turn to these days.
His shorts are great, David! There's something about his Amos Walker character that really speaks to me so I'll keep hunting them down - along with anything else I can find :)
As you might expect, Estleman is everywhere here. And he is a very nice man. I have a photography book on Amos Walker places in Detroit.
It must be fun to read a book where you actually know the streets and places where the book takes place, Patti!
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