A Small Blast on My Own Trumpet

A little over a year ago, I shared my pleasure when Pesticide, the first Linder and Donatelli mystery, received a starred review from Kirkus. Since then, there’ve been no more Kirkus stars for my Polizei Bern books, although Sons and Brothers and the forthcoming A Fondness for Truth (April 2024) were praised by its reviewers.

Recently, another of the online reviewing services, BookLife, wrote a terrific couple of paragraphs about A Fondness for Truth that you can read here. I’m delighted that the unknown reviewer considers my latest book “empathetic, entertaining, [and] smartly plotted.” Let’s hope you all do, too.

Hard as it is not to be elated by good reviews and crushed by bad ones (as I was when one reviewer called Sons and Brothers “routine”), I know there’s an extraordinary amount of luck involved. Professional book review services like Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly pass judgment on tens of thousands of books a year, so they must have an enormous staff of freelance reviewers, each with a unique taste in fiction. I imagine all of them are experienced enough to distinguish between the book equivalents of Joe versus the Volcano (possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen, despite starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan) and the terrific Sleepless in Seattle.

Most books, though, aren’t such obvious duds or gems; instead, they fall somewhere in between, which means one reader can love something that bores another silly. I, for example, would not recommend Where the Crawdads Sing or Gone Girl, two novels that many readers raved about, whereas I love Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series but can never get my friends to read it! Professional reviewers, too, have their personal likes and dislikes, which means I have to hope that the reviewing services will send my fourth book to someone who happens to think it’s great—like my unknown fan at BookLife. I just wish I could send him or her a thank-you note!