Why did I decide to do jump ahead to chapter 20 now? Well, I felt like pepping up my weekend a bit with a good murder and I have to admit I had a lot of fun writing it. If you have a map of Venice anywhere, you could get it out and check the places I send Madeleine as you read.
Before you read - the story so far: Madeleine has been investigating the death of her brother in Croatia during the civil war, 16 years before. Her investigations take her to Zagreb where she meets the charming Tomislav, a journalist, who helps her to obtain some information relating to her brother. Madeleine's marriage to her husband is going through a rocky patch and she has a fling with Tomi, which she finds exciting but not necessarily what she wants. She catches a night train back to Munich, but on the way decides to get out at Villach in order to meet her husband Franz (who works as a train conductor on the night trains) and travel on with him to Venice. In Venice he has to go to bed for a few hours as he has been working all night and they arrange to meet up around midday to do some sightseeing. The story opens as she leaves him at his hotel and goes to find herself some breakfast...
25/01/13: I have now included people's feedback and added Chapter 20 to 'Good Stuff' on the right hand side of the blog.
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteThis morning my train journey from Augsburg to Munich was filled with suspense. And for once I was hoping that the train may be late to give me more time to enjoy reading about "Death in Venice"!
Now I'm wondering about who killed Boran. Members of the group of friendly african bag sellers trying to protect Madeleine? But that would mean that they quite cold blooded stabbed him in the middle of a crowd and even had a bottle of whine handy to disguise the death.
Or was it done by Colonel Kaiec's agents? But how did they know so early that Boran failed to do his job properly?
I'm curious how this turns out to be.
Lotte
Well, yes, Lotte. The bag sellers did stab him, but let's face it, Boran had it coming.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if it's not clear that they were responsible and acting out of revenge for what happened to Isaiah then maybe I need to work on what Adofo says to Madeleine to stop her going onto the Rialto.
I've already got quite a lot of changes that I want to make. It's a long process getting it right, but feedback is very, very helpful.
J
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteit is not the fact in itself, that the bag sellers killed Boran, which irritated me. But the way it was performed, which to me looked more like the act of a professional killer than the spontaneous action of a bunch of well-meaning people living on the edge of society. One would expect it to be done more amateurish. Perhaps they would have lured Boran into some dark corner before killing him...
Lotte
Well, I liked the irony of Boran being dispatched by the very people he despised but operating far more efficiently than he did. And if you think about it, why are there so many illegal African immigrants in Italy? It's not because the Italians welcome them with open arms, that's for sure. They often go there to escape countries crippled by civil war and extreme violence of a kind we fortunately very rarely encounter. I think it's not implausible to imagine that there could be individuals amongst them who are very efficient assassins.
ReplyDelete