Just Wondering

[madrobins]

When did writers of thrillers start ending every damned chapter with a piece of withheld information? I just finished an otherwise quite good medical procedural, and by the time I was halfway through the book I was so irritated by this stylistic quirk (which I have seen elsewhere--most egregiously by Dan Brown in Da Vinci Code) that I almost didn't finish it, despite being genuinely curious about how it was going to play out. Is this just an earmark of an author who doesn't trust her audience to stay engaged? I know that a lot of the penny dreadfuls of yore did this...but they were penny dreadfuls. And it's no longer Yore.

Grumble grumble grumble.