And now for yet another recommendation on my blog; first some good music, then a good film, and now a good book!

Rich gave me this book for my birthday. He knows I like this particular author and so bought me his latest novel.

Of course, I’d readily tell you which book and which author, since I am in effect recommending it, but I won’t since I don’t want to spoil it for you. (Contact me if you really want to know when you’ve read this!)

The reason?

Well, although it is pretty prescriptive in the fact that it is very much like his others, this one is annoyingly odd in that, for the first time in any book I have read, the baddies win!

Yes! The bad guys actually win! I was horrified!

There you are, reading like the wind cause you want the goodies to win, and you know they have all these horrendous obstacles to get over, and the baddies are always one step ahead and you have to read the next page and then the next chapter, cause you know the goodies will just be able to pull forward a bit, and then they do, and then the baddies notch it up a bit, and then your hooked; everything else goes out the window, and you stop communicating with the rest of the world, cause you really want the baddies to get it wear it hurts and teach them a lesson, and you secretly know that in the penulimate chapter they will, and you just want to know how, and you’re desperate for the last chapter when the good guys all ride off into the sunset cause they saved the world, and you want the relief of knowing it all worked out okay in the end, even though there were times when you secretly wondered if it would, but knew that it had to.

Of course, there’s always the most crucial bit, you know, in the penultimate chapter, when you really know that this is it, this is where the stitched up stooge realises he really is a goodie after all, makes the right decision and saves the day!

But no! Not in this novel!

In this novel it’s completely the opposite and you have to read the same sentence three fucking times just to make sure you did understand that he has completely fucked it up for the good guys, and then it really hits you that the bad guys have won!

And then to top it all off, in the last chapter, the chief bad guy sails off into the sunset on his 192ft 5 deck mega-yacht!

I was completely fucked!

But I’ve worked it all out now.

Life on our little planet has nothing to do with good winning out over evil. That’s a myth. There’s loads and loads of evidence that shows you crime does pay, and that there are plenty of baddies in this world ruining the lives of the goodies.

But in fiction? We like a little light relief don’t we? From all this shit they call life. We want a struggle, yeah, but we all want the good guy to win, and in this day and age of the franchise, any writer would be killing his career if he killed off his hero – I mean even Sherlock Homes was forced back from the dead!

There’d be outrage if the baddies actually won and killed off 007 or Doctor Who. They can’t, and indeed never will.

But in the novel I’ve just read, the baddies did win. They won big time, and it was sickening. I was so disgusted. And then so annoyed that it made me look at life in a completely different way and realise that yes, the baddies do win in life. Far more than they should. (I’m wondering if they will make a film of this one – there have been others of his – and if Hollywood will change the ending if they do!)

Anyway, I have come to the conclusion I will not pander to the needs of fiction in my writing and have good win out over evil. If I think the baddie needs to win in anything I write in the future, then so be it it. You have been warned.

Thanks JG!