Robert Crais took a risk. In the mid-eighties, he quit his oh-so-comfy job as a writer for TV shows -- including Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice -- to write novels. He gambled on his writing talent. He won.
His first book (1987), THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT, kicked-off his acclaimed Elvis Cole / Joe Pike series. Fifteen books later, Robert Crais’s books have garnered fistfuls of nominations and awards, including the Macavity, Shamus, Anthony, Edgar, and the Ross Macdonald Literary Award, and his books consistently hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list The movie, HOSTAGE, released in 2005, was based on his second stand-alone. It starred Bruce Willis.
Here are some Deep Editing examples from his 2008, 2007, and 2006 releases:
CHASING DARKNESS, 2008: Jonna, waiting in an interview room, knows the police have new evidence that implicate her in committing a murder.
P 251: Jonna leaned back when we entered, and laced her fingers. She seemed completely at ease—not relaxed the way you’re relaxed when you’re just hanging around, but comfortable like an experienced athlete.
Deep Editing Analysis: Crais amplified Jonna’s body language with those opening lines for Chapter 43. Crais shows the reader Jonna looks at ease, yet compares her to an experienced athlete. The subtext sends the message: like an experienced athlete is psychologically prepared for a competition, Joanna is psychologically prepared for a battle.
THE WATCHMAN, 2007: This girl just learned that someone she trusted with her life, has malicious intent. She’s in danger.
P. 250: All she felt was the strange out-of-body sensation with the air humming on her skin. Her vision blurred, so she knew she was crying, but she didn’t gasp or sob and her nose didn’t clog: it was as if someone else was crying, and she was watching it from the inside.
Deep Editing Analysis: Crais made the girl’s first response to danger be a visceral response. Visceral first, what Dwight Swain (and I) recommend in Motivation Reaction Units. Crais gets credit for fresh writing. He described the disassociative experience--air humming on skin, oblivious to crying, watching from the inside—in a way that gave the reader a psychological lift. No clichés. No overused phrases. No tried and trite writing.
THE TWO MINUTE RULE, 2006: The next piece always grabs me. I’m there. I’m right there feeling Holman’s pain.
The set-up: Holman was just released from prison. The only thought that’s given him a reason to live for the last 20 years, was to reconcile with his son, who is now, ironically, a cop. The excerpt below is from Chapter One. Wally runs the half-way house. Wally informs Holman that the night before his release, his son was murdered.
P. 15 –
“He was killed last night. I’m sorry, man. I’m really, really sorry.”
Holman heard the words: he saw the pain in Wally’s eyes and felt the concern in Wally’s touch, but Wally and the room and the world left Holman behind like one car pulling away from another on a flat desert highway, Holman hitting the brakes, Wally hitting the gas, Holman watching the world race away.
Deep Editing Analysis: I recommend that you read that piece out loud. Several times. Analyze it. Study the cadence. If Crais had left out the phrase—on a flat desert highway—the cadence would suffer. Notice the use of asyndeton in the last three phrases. No conjunctions. Asyndeton is one of the 25 rhetorical devices I teach in Deep Editing.
Crais laced that piece with several gifts for the reader. Fresh writing. Multiple senses. Strong cadence. Rhetorical devices. Strong similes to convey the out-of-reality experience. He loaded it with psychological power.
If you want to read suspense novels that are super-charged with stellar writing and plot twists, read Robert Crais. You’ll be super-charged too.
