Monday, November 07, 2005

T. Jefferson Parker and Our New Quotation

Last week's quotation....Jeff Parker. My favorite thing about Jeff's writing is his characterization, and that sentence is a beaut. He manages to work in a complex psychological take on Merci without it feeling heavy handed, and without giving it too much emphasis. It's funny, even, and it deploys character in the service of the plot.

I had a really funny experience once reading one of Jeff's books. He used the word "skosh," and I looked it up in my American Heritage Dictionary, curious as to its origin (Japanese). The dictionary then offered a usage example from, you guessed it, T Jefferson Parker. I told Jeff and we had a good laugh and then he went out and bought the dictionary. Hell, I would have too.

Next quotation, one of my all-time favorites (in keeping with our crime theme):

"I am in blood stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er."

2 comments:

James Lincoln Warren said...

I wrote a novelette that stole its plot from the piece in which this quote appears. The story was called "Miching Malicho", and was the cover story for the March 2003 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

The villain quotes more from the same work near the end: "Yet I will try my last. Before my body I throw the warlike shield."

JLW

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