I’m enjoying Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels. Herron carefully controls the information given to readers. He misleads them in interesting ways. Characters die. He’s doing fascinating stuff with spy fiction as a genre. The main character Jackson Lamb is so not James Bond, and he leads a team of spies who have failed and been relegated to “Slough House,” as the rest of the agency calls it. The team has been nicknamed “Slow Horses” by others in the agency.

One technique Herron uses in Dead Lions, the second book of the series, is bookends or “a return with a difference.” The are lots of examples of this technique, from The Hero’s Journey generally to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings specifically. (The hobbits return to The Shire changed and are able to make necessary changes there, for example.)

I think as a way to introduce new readers to the Slow Horses team in Dead Lions, Herron begins with a hypothetical cat sneaking into their base of operations. This hypothetical cat moves from room to room in the shabby building where the Slow Horses work. As readers follow the cat, they learn about different characters as they see how the characters inhabit their offices. Setting characterizes. Also, readers learn about the characters as they see their reactions to a hypothetical cat. I think at least one character feeds the cat. Most ignore it. Jackson Lamb drops it out the widow of his third-story office.

The return with a difference occurs as the novel ends. There is a general summary, but also a mouse that makes its way around Slough House. Like the cat, the mouse observes the characters. Those observations provide closure for character arcs and the closing of those character arcs helps close the narrative generally. In some cases, the presence of the mouse allows for characterization. Jackson Lamb, for example, upon seeing the mouse, says “What Slough House needs is a cat.”

I’ll continue reading this series because it’s compelling, and I find myself learning about writing from it.

“Does the Egg Man bring the Son of Man his eggs?”

“He yet brings him his eggs.”

“How does he like his eggs?”

“Who?”

“Son of Man. How do he like his eggs?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

“I don’t know him,” Nate said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Miggy said. “He knows you.”

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

I checked this book out from the library, but I want to have my own copy. I’ll be buying one soon.

This tiny quotation ends a chapter. It ends that chapter with a mystery as one character knows something that neither readers nor another character knows. Not reading on, especially given the context the rest of the chapter provides, feels impossible to me.

The context consists of Miggy sharing information about her job and eating a slice of pie, which could be catastrophically boring but in McBride’s narrative isn’t. Part of the reason it isn’t boring is because of earlier characterization and who is at stake. But even if the chapter stood alone it would include characters’ reactions to each other. Those reactions provide tension. The dialogue also characterizes, and it reflects tensions between characters, but much of it is long paragraphs of Miggy describing her workplace. Those descriptions matter to readers because of earlier work McBride has done, but also because of the setting as she shares those descriptions and how Miggy uses an element of it: the pie. Finally, the description is interesting because she has reasons to not give it. She’s in favor of how the information she’s presenting might be used, but wary of being the source of it and explicitly presents it in a way she feels will give her deniability. This also adds to the tension. She’s presenting a plan for a rescue. (I’ll avoid spoilers by saying no more.)

There is much more to say about this chapter and this book: the way dialogue characterizes, the implications of names characters give themselves and that characters give each other, how backstories can contain mysteries and move the plot, and how chapters can be structured to hook reads as much as first lines. I highly recommend The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store as a novel but also as a textbook on fiction writing.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

This is an appealing first sentence in part because it hints at so many possibilities. Short stories often begin with first sentences that suggest something at risk for a character, or that’s certainly one of my favorite approaches. Some novels start the same way, but here is another technique. Options, enough that a reader literally wonders what will happen next, are another great way to begin and might be an especially good way to start a novel.

Among the options and directions the next sentence could take readers, among the questions the next sentences, paragraphs, and chapters can answer are why is Manderley important enough to dream of, what is Manderley, what is the character’s life like during the day (is it better or worse than their dream), and even what have other dreams (nightmares?) of this person or place been like.

Sharing dreams is also an intimate thing. Readers are immediately invited inside the character’s inner life and into a version of that inner life the character does not control perfectly but that probably has some relationship to their daily life. Dreams characterize. Readers know they are getting something they’ll need to interpret. Characters might offer interpretations of their own dreams (or refuse to interpret them) in ways that reveal who they are to readers. Readers will get to know who this “I” is by reading on.

Journal entries might provide similar invitations into inner lives. Epislatory fiction adds the possibility of an audience and complicates the degree of invitation as a result. A similar first sentence might begin with a dilemma: “My new boyfriend left his journal/laptop/browser open on his desk.” A dilemma like this is an opportunity for intimacy but doesn’t seem an invitation to the same degree of closeness as a dream, at least not to me this morning.