Do You Read the Book Before or After Watching the Movie or TV Show?

By

Scott D. Parker

Season 3 of "Reacher" is out and I'm loving it! But a friend and fellow writer considers it "downright awful." 

What? Are we watching the same show?

To be fair, my fellow writer has read all the Lee Child novels. I've read none of them. For me, Reacher is a TV show starring Alan Ritchson. It had me at the opening segment of the first episode when Reacher did the Sherlock Holmes thing and observed and made correct deductions. I blew through seasons one and two and am eagerly waiting each week as new episodes of season three roll out.

So I'm coming at the show from a different point of view. But awful? I don't agree.

Reading the Book Before...or After...

A co-worker and I talk books. He has read many if not all the Reacher books and gave me a short list of his favorites. 

Season 3 is based on the novel Persuader. As this new season approached, my co-worker queued up the audiobook on his phone and re-listened to the novel prior to watching the show. I asked why and his answer was that he wanted to refresh himself with the story.

Fair enough. I used to do that as well. Memorable examples include The Empire Strikes Back and Batman '89. One of my fellow SF book club guys re-read The Lord Of the Rings in 2001 for the same reason. 

But starting with the Star Wars Prequels in 1999, I opted for a different approach: if I read the novelizations, I do it after seeing the movie. I am still able to compare the two--the three Star Wars prequel novelizations are great--but I chose to watch the movie first. I learned that I like to do my comparisons by reading vs. by watching a movie. Movies and TV shows by definition do things differently, making choices that align with a good visual medium and leaving some other things in the novels. Tom Bombadil anyone?

What do you do? Do you read the book first? Second? Or not at all?

Meeting Harlan Coban’s Myron Bolitar For The First Time

After reading Alton Brown's new book and a SF novel, I needed a bit of a literary palate cleanser. Also this week, a co-worker and fellow audiobook enthusiast and I were discussing the Myron Bolitar series by Harlan Coben and I opted to turn to book 3 of the Bolitar series. Since it's top of mind, I thought I'd do a rerun of a post from last September when I first discovered Bolitar. 

by

Scott D. Parker

Where has this book been all my life? 

On the bookshelf of your local store, just waiting to be read. 

We’ve Only Just Met After All This Time

Harlan Coben has been writing professionally since 1990 but he really became famous for the Myron Bolitar series, starting in 1995. I’ve known about Coben for a long time. Multiple best-sellers every time he publishes a book. Multiple adaptations of his stories on TV. And, recently, the professor of a BBC Maestro online class that helps writers craft thrillers. I’m always game to learn—especially from an acknowledged veteran of the genre—so I bought the class.

While listening to Coben talk in the class’s introduction, it dawned on me that I might want to see how he actually writes by actually reading one of his books. Why not start at the beginning?

Myron Bolitar: Not Your Typical Detective

For the uninitiated, Bolitar is a sports agent who could have made it big in the NBA were it not for a severe injury. He returned to college, earned a law degree, and spent time working as an investigator before becoming a sports agent. 

A sports agent? How might he be involved in a mystery? Well, it’s not that hard, really.

The Twisty Setup

When we meet Bolitar, he is in the middle of negotiations with the New York “Giants” (Titans in the book, ironic since the Tennessee Oilers (formerly from my hometown of Houston) would change their name to the Titans in 1999) on behalf of phenom Christian Steele. He’s a rookie quarterback and he sought out Bolitar for representation, but the not-quite-gangsters running the football team want to reduce the kid’s asking price.

Complicating everything is a phone call Christian received. It’s from his girlfriend, Kathy Culver. That would be his missing girlfriend whom everyone presumes is dead. Know who’s also dead? Kathy’s dad, a medical examiner, who was killed during a mugging. 

If that wasn’t enough, there’s one more thing. Christian received a manila envelope. Inside is a porn magazine (how quaint, huh?) but that’s not what gets Christian’s attention. No, that would be the advertisements in the back for a 1-900 number. One in particular has a photo of none other than Kathy Culver.

An Entertaining Detective

Now, I don’t know about you, but I was hooked pretty fast with this set of circumstances. Plus there’s football talk, so that’s just gravy. But if the person with whom you are experiencing this tale of mystery isn’t fun to be with, the reading will be a slog.

Of course it wasn’t. Myron Bolitar comes from a long line of wise-cracking detectives going back a century. He gives as good as he gets. He’s 31 at the publication date of 1995, so he’s just slightly older than I was at the time. I thoroughly enjoyed all the references that I got here in 2024—and probably wouldn’t have even thought twice about in 1995. 

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Jonathan Marosz, did a fantastic job. He got Bolitar’s snark down pat, and when he narrated scenes with actual criminals and miscreants from the New York area, those characters practically jumped out in front of me.

An Even More Entertaining Co-Star

Ironically, it was his reading of a co-star where he knocked it out of the park. Windsor Horne Lockwood III is Bolitar’s old college roommate, friend, and “partner.” Bolitar’s office is in a rented space in Lockwood’s office building, but Win, as he is commonly known, pretty much helps Bolitar throughout the entire case. 

In the novel, Coben writes the following when we first meet Win:

People often said that Myron looked nothing like his name—an observation Myron took as high praise; Windsor Horne Lockwood III, however, looked exactly like his name. Blond hair, perfect length, parted on the right side. His features were classical patrician, almost too handsome, like something crafted in porcelain. [...] Win even had that creepy accent, the one that did not originate from any particular geographical location as much as from certain prep school like Andover and Exeter. (Win had gone to Exeter.)

Now, with that name and that description, you *know* how Win sounds. And Marosz does exACTly that kind of line reading for Win’s dialogue. Pitch perfect.

The Mystery Itself

The one thing I knew about Coben before reading this book is that his stories include twists upon twists. That’s evident from the TV shows I’ve seen. But was that baked into his first major book?

Yup. Deliciously so. I honestly didn’t see the ending coming…which makes for a wonderful reading experience. 

I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in a long time, and by “a long time,” I mean since last week’s book. Seriously, Myron Bolitar is quite an engaging character, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. How much do you ask? I’ve already downloaded the second book in the series, Drop Shot.

I know I’m late to the Myron Bolitar party, so what are some of your favorite books in the series? And let me know your favorite standalone Coben books. 

The Unexpected Discovery

By

Scott D. Parker

Have you ever been surprised by a piece of pop culture?

It happened to me this week. My wife and I attended a concert on Monday. The names on the bill were Howard Jones, ABC, and Richard Blade. I knew Jones and had already seen him once, decades ago, but hadn’t listened to his music in a while. Driving to downtown Houston, we listened to HoJo’s greatest hits and I discovered I still knew most of the words to his song—and could still play a mean steering wheel keyboard. His set was fantastic, and I especially appreciated his changing up nearly every song, making the live experience something special rather than “just the record played live and loud.”

Richard Blade is a DJ on Sirius XM’s First Wave station and I wasn’t really sure what he was going to do. Turned out, he gave the audience a history of English New Wave synth pop, complete with a presentation and sound drops, that was so utterly entertaining that I wanted him to keep going after his forty-five minutes were up.

ABC was the revelation. I could name you exactly one song, “Be Near Me,” before Monday night. Well, I actually knew two songs, but I never equated the band as the singer of “Poison Arrow.” But the rest of the fourteen-song set, led by vocalist Martin Fry, was fantastic. 

One song in particular, “Viva Love,” really captured my ear on the first listen. The next day, I jumped on YouTube to find a live version so I could listen again. Then, I found out it was from the 2016 album, The Lexicon of Love II, and I listened to that album. The gorgeous orchestrations and Fry’s crooner style is right up my audio alley. Played it for the wife that evening and ended the week having purchased the record. 

Which naturally brings up the question: how had I missed this band and album?

Because there is simply too much out there to know everything. And this applies to books and authors as well.

Discovering New-to-Me Books and Authors

A few years ago, I became curious about cozy mysteries. It being December, I selected a book with a cover that looked to merge my love of Christmas, Hallmark movies, and mysteries: David Rosenfelt’s Dachshund in the Snow. My preconceived ideas were all cutesy things where the titular hound solves the case. I was prepared for saccharine.

Didn’t get it.

What I got was a traditional mystery, yes, but nowhere near cozy. The likeable narrator and main character, Andy Carpenter, is a chip off the block of past detectives like Donald Lam and Archie Goodwin. I’ve now read eight of the Carpenter series after circling back to the first.

Sticking with the cozy genre, I started reading the Lucy Stone series by Leslie Meier because each one of her titles links up with a holiday. It’s a perfect marketing plan, one I used with my own first Christmas mystery. Again, I thought I was going to get a bunch of tropes from what seem to populate cozy mysteries. What I got was a plucky lead character who is a reporter, wife, and mom who has to juggle all those things while she keep digging to discover the truth behind recent deaths. I think I’ve now read five.

Most recently, I delved into the Myron Bolitar novels of Harlan Coben. All I knew about Coben was his modern, twisty thrillers—although I’ve never read one. When I purchased his BBC class to learn how he writes his books, I reckoned I ought to read one. Deal Breaker was quite good, and blew away all my preconceived ideas of how you can have a sports agent lead a detective series. 

 

What have been some of your unexpected discoveries, either in books, music, or movies?