- Joined
- Mar 30, 2005
- Messages
- 1,692
- Reaction score
- 252
- Location
- near Atlanta, Georgia
- Website
- madscientistmatt.blogspot.com
Writing for the Christian market has some unique challenges. Do you cut out objectionable content or try to show the effects of sin in all its detail? If you want the book to teach lessons on Christian living, how do you avoid making them seem like infodumps?
Until the Last Dog Dies opts for a grittier approach to Christian writing. Much of the writing felt like a good mystery for the secular market - and I mean that in a good way; a Christian detective in a Christian book is a lot more believable if it feels like he's in the same world as detective novels written for the secular market. John Robinson often manages to integrate lessons on prayer, compassion, and mentoring into the story well, with it only feeling like an infodump once or twice.
If there's one character that could use more development, it's the villain. It's implied that he has magical powers, but it's hard to tell if that is what he uses for murders or if he just uses sabotage and the like. Much of the time he just seems to be an angry killer with abilities that may nor may not be supernatural. If Joe Box had managed to find a few more clues as to what made him tick - why he was driven to experiment with the occult and wants to kill, or if he is under control of a demon, what the demon's motives were - would have made him a bit scarier. And I don't think an atheist reader would find him very convincing.
Joe Box, on the other hand, is a fairly well developed and believable character, a Vietnam vet who has found his way into the private eye business. He's haunted by his own (metaphorical) demons that have, just like in the real world, not entirely been solved by his conversion to Christianity.
All in all, it's a good fun read for a Christian audience who doesn't want their mystery novel to feel like a sermon in disguise.
Until the Last Dog Dies opts for a grittier approach to Christian writing. Much of the writing felt like a good mystery for the secular market - and I mean that in a good way; a Christian detective in a Christian book is a lot more believable if it feels like he's in the same world as detective novels written for the secular market. John Robinson often manages to integrate lessons on prayer, compassion, and mentoring into the story well, with it only feeling like an infodump once or twice.
If there's one character that could use more development, it's the villain. It's implied that he has magical powers, but it's hard to tell if that is what he uses for murders or if he just uses sabotage and the like. Much of the time he just seems to be an angry killer with abilities that may nor may not be supernatural. If Joe Box had managed to find a few more clues as to what made him tick - why he was driven to experiment with the occult and wants to kill, or if he is under control of a demon, what the demon's motives were - would have made him a bit scarier. And I don't think an atheist reader would find him very convincing.
Joe Box, on the other hand, is a fairly well developed and believable character, a Vietnam vet who has found his way into the private eye business. He's haunted by his own (metaphorical) demons that have, just like in the real world, not entirely been solved by his conversion to Christianity.
All in all, it's a good fun read for a Christian audience who doesn't want their mystery novel to feel like a sermon in disguise.