to be continued surely

It's Dan Brown's twenty worst sentences.

On a related note the Globe has an odd review of the Lost Symbol this morning.

"I have a confession: I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. Yes, yes, I know, it's overwrought and overdone and over the top. But there's a reason it sold more than 80 million copies worldwide. It's good old-fashioned cliffhanging storytelling at its best."

No bookseller is going to look a gift horse (or even a serviceable donkey) in the mouth so a phenomenon is a fine thing.

But Larry Orenstein who wrote the review is a member of the Crime Writers of Canada so it follows that he knows a few good storytellers. I mention that only insofar as I just this morning finished Robert Rotenberg's Old City Hall and not only is it "storytelling at its finest" it's also very damn well written.

Errors of fact and laughably bad prose get in the way of storytelling and that's not a problem with good crime writing.

Let those cash registers ring, but there's no reason to settle for mere storytelling.