The guest victim on Criminal Minds last night was Gina Mantegna, daughter of Joe, who is the new regular cast member on the series. It was one of the better episodes in a while, though I had the geographic profiling information figured out long before the FBIs did.
I finished The Doomsters by Ross MacDonald. It has an overly long section of exposition at the end as the villain explains the complete nature of all the murders. Sort of like the Poirot exposition when he lays out the crime to all the suspects. I don’t think that sort of scene would fly today. Page after page after page of dialog.
For a change of pace, I picked up Just One More Thing (Stories from my Life) by Peter Falk. It’s sort of an autobiography, but more of a loose collection of anecdotes, mostly light and amusing. I’ve been a fan of Columbo for decades and am enjoying this fast read. I started it last night and am already over half way through. He has not a single unkind thing to say about anyone and some of his interactions with people like Frank Sinatra and Frank Capra display his amazement at how he got to be where he ended up. His stories about his various international arrests are amusing, too.
This morning was a bit of a surprise. I didn’t think I was going to get much done as I’m still waiting on some research material. Rather than wasting time, I decided to go back and revise the material I’ve written to date. I knew there were a few details I wanted to add, as well as fleshing out description, which I tend to scrimp on during the first pass. At the end of the session, I discovered that I’d added another thousand words, so it was just like an ordinary writing session after all. Four days, four thousand words. A good pace to keep up, if possible.
