Trying to learn from other writers - 3
I’ve just finished reading the second Claire Hanover mystery, and I’d have to say Beth Groundwater’s main character is another one strong enough to my interest through a series. Claire, of course, is a very different character from Sam Acquillo or Gus LeGarde . For a start, she’s a woman. Plus, while enormously resourceful, she really doesn’t have the kind of background or physical strength to be an action hero. But she does have lots of character, or chutzpah, as one of her friends has been known to say. Claire has the confidence to believe what she sees and to tell it like she sees it. Just because no one else saw the ski tracks doesn’t mean they’re not there. Just because no one else sees the danger doesn’t mean she shouldn’t protect her daughter. Just because… So she walks into police stations and describes exactly the sort of details that someone unaccustomed to such places would notice—the presence or absence of family photographs, the pictures on the walls… She walks into a ni...