Disturbing Trends

I realize two books do not a trend make. However, something in both of them points to what could be the tip of a nasty iceberg.

In both books the female protagonist owns a small business. So far, so good. They are both experiencing marital difficulties. Nothing original, but not bad as far as it goes. The respective husbands are suspects in the murders the books are about. Saw that coming. But both women are total ditzes. And there are lines like "That would take analysis and emotional stability. Not something for a female to attempt." Spoken by the protagonists! Excuse me?

In the first book, the woman is trying her hand at a small home crafty type business because her children are grown and her husband is burying himself at work. She forgets to deliver an order--twice. She doesn't feel like putting together the second order, but does not call the client to cancel. The whole focus is doing right by her man--who has been alternately ignoring her and treating her like crap for months. The business feels like an author afterthought. "Oh, crafty mysteries are big, let's put a craft theme in it." The protagonist doesn't even figure out the crime, she stumbles into the perp. Great.

The second book is by an author whose other series I like. That one has a strong female lead who is a great business woman and still manages to be a good friend, attractive, etc. The one I'm currently reading is about a woman with a good business but no business sense. She never knows what she has in stock. She doesn't know who she is renting her shop from (hubby set it all up and even though he left her months before, she hasn't bothered to find any of this out). At least she feels like the wronged woman, but the author has set up the description of the husband and his 'dropping out' in such a way that it's obvious our heroine was the one not paying attention or being supportive. That's the most interesting part of the story, truth be told.

But it's the poor dumb helpless female thing that's worrying. I watched the popularity of Sex And The City with confusion. Four supposedly strong, intelligent, successful woman and all they can find to talk with each other about are shoes and men? Gray's Anatomy is populated with whiny, relationship obsessed residents who should not have the time. And too many shows to mention show successful women as harpies.

I thought we'd gotten past all this, but apparently not. All the more reason to celebrate authors who write realistic, well-rounded characters-male or female.

Throwing Books

I finished The Body in the Library last week and have been having a hard time deciding on the next book to read. I picked up Fool Moon, the second in the Dresden Files series. About 30 pages in and I can't get into it. Maybe part of it is that they adapted this story for the television series and I already know "whodunnit." But the biggest part is the way Dresden talks about himself. "I growled" and "I barked" are used as dialogue tags several times. Okay, the book is about werewolves. Cute. Except people don't talk about themselves like that. And one of my nitpicks with the first book resurfaced over and over in this one. He keeps describing himself as tall, lanky, long-legged. I get it. You're tall. You don't have to tell me three times every chapter. So I put it down.

Then I picked up The Cat Who Dropped A Bombshell, the 28th book in the series by Lillian Jackson Braun. That is the book that I literally threw across the room two chapters in. All of the characters spent those two chapters telling each other things they already knew. Maybe it's a case of author malaise after so many books about the same characters. Maybe the editors just didn't have it in them to read another book about KoKo and Yum Yum either. Whatever the case, I just couldn't do it. I may go back and look at an earlier installment to see if it is the "curse of number 28" or just indicative of the genre. Which would make me very sad.

There are some good cozies out there. I have read them. So I'm not quite ready to give up on the genre altogether. But it is frustrating to run into so many bad ones.