A Different Review
For those who are used to reading my blog post reviews, this one will be a little bit different to the norm, as it will also be going on the discussion forum for the National Centre for Writing where I am currently doing an eighteen week crime writing course with Julia Crouch.
On the forum, the first task this week was to look at a book critically and say:
Why do you admire it?
So dealing with question one in relation to this book, why do I admire Cara’s writing? That would be because of her different approaches to her form by the way that she uses social media and accurate pod cast language and has always done this since her first book Close to Home. She was one of the first authors I read that took on this approach.
What does the author do well?
Question 2, The Whole Truth distinguishes itself from a lot of police procedural books I have read recently because of the way it deals with multiple different cases in one story, much like a proper station really works. Although, it has some cliches which are common to the genre, it was necessary given the arc for the characters that Cara had planned. This over reaching arc was really well interwoven with the other story which is in the book. This theme that of rape will have an impact upon how I undertake this course as my book is also based around the same subject, but there are so many good writers that have written about this but there was no way for me to know that I would be reading a book based around this on the eve of me starting the course. A really useful coincidence.
How has he/she achieved that?
According to Cara’s acknowledgements one of the reasons that she was so accurate in her depictions of this was her use of expert assistance by several advisors. For anyone that is undertaking a crime writing course I would heavily advise this and some good names to look for are Gib Consulting and, Graham Bartlett for the police procedural angle. I have used both of these in the past for advice on my works in progress.
What does that tell you about the things you’d like to achieve?
When it comes to police procedurals accuracy it is one of the most important elements of what I have been advised about, I won’t say more here but there will be extracts of my interviews with experts on the forum later to help everybody if I can.
To conclude The Whole Truth, there are so many different elements around rape within this novel, I would say this is really well rounded, covering a lot of the key points needed for a novel on this subject, with some unexpected elements too.
I hope everyone else enjoys this as much as I did when they get chance to read it.
