Death of a Writer: A Novel | 
| Author: Michael Collins
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 607649
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1596913061
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781596913066
ASIN: 1596913061
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
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Product Description
From Booker Prize nominee Michael Collins comes “a wonderfully creepy murder mystery” (People), about a novelist whose last hope for fame may be the deepest secret in his past.
For E. Robert Pendleton, a professor clinging to tenure and living in the shambles of his once-bright literary career, death seems to be the only remaining option. But his suicide attempt fails, and during his long convalescence, a novel is discovered hidden in his basement: a brilliant, semi-autobiographical story with a gruesome child murder at its core.
The publication of Scream causes a storm of publicity and raises questions about its content—in particular, about the uncanny resemblance between Pendleton’s fictional crime and a real-life, unresolved local murder. How did Pendleton know the case so well? And why did he bury Scream in his basement? A rare blend of suspense, humor and insight, Death of a Writer is “dark, disturbing and damnably good.” (Baltimore Sun).
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Painful August 9, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
(First, I apologize for the length of this review, but I included wordy quotes to illustrate exactly what I found tiresome with this novel.)
I gave up at p. 250 of this 300-page novel. I don't even know if the ending redeemed this slog of a read nor do I care who killed whom. An overwritten, meandering, repetitive and ultimately tiresome story. The PW synopsis was what lured me initially, and admittedly, I was engaged in the first half. For me, the story fell apart in the second half:
(1) Repetitive and pedagogical discussions on the existential significance of main character's novel. The reader is treated to a lengthy discourse on Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ad nauseum; once is interesting, five or more times is annoying.
(2) William Carlos Williams' poem is interjected several times, yet the meaning is never made clear nor is its connection to the murder revealed (maybe it was on the last few pages, so correct me if I'm wrong). Several instances like this. Not necessary to ram down the reader's throat that you're into Nabokov, Dostoevsky, WCW, Nietzsche, Hawthorne, etc. when they have no bearing on the case/murder/mystery. It's like being back in the classroom again.
(3) Det. Ryder's inner turmoil (problem with daughter, problem with present wife, problem with past case, problem with this case) is revisited over and over. Okay, I got it, he has personal demons. What fictional detective doesn't?
(4) Main character's vegetative state is described repeatedly. Enough already--it's painful to read. Once or twice would have been more than sufficient, but time and time again, it almost smacks of cruelty.
(5) Peppered with characters who have no significance to the story, yet each is treated to recurring appearances and lengthy exposition each time. What's the point?
(6) Several reviewers here are spot on: the story became messier as it progressed and the progress was at snail's pace, and too wordy when a concise paragraph would have had more impact. I just picked a page at random...this is just ONE SENTENCE amongst numerous paragraphs throughout describing Horowitz's ascent to stardom:
"He was now entrenched in this collegiate reading circuit, keynote speaker at commencements, commanding a king's ransom for a mere night's engagement, recipient of no fewer than five honoree doctorates, and paid administrator of cash-rich grant-in-aid scholarships, almost always disquietingly named after the dead, or the near dead, insufferable socialite wives of the rich, from the L. Myrtle Schwartz Foundation for the Arts and the Kathryn S. Breedlove Grant to the Amaryllis Grubb Endowment, named for Amaryllis Grubb, a hard-of-hearing octogenarian heiress he had been forced to coddle for funds over numerous dinners, a woman who had lost the ability to ---- silently."
Not convinced yet? Here's another random selection...one describing an atrium. What's the significance of the atrium? None. Horowitz was just passing through it to get to another room:
"He had read somewhere that the flying buttressed colossal excess of medieval cathedrals had been created for the sheer effect of such contrast between peasant existence and the gilded mansion of heavenly eternal reward, though this building was different, of an eartly concern, a secular shrine to learning, the walls painted with various natural phenomena: images of erupting volcanoes, flowing magma, earthquake fissures, continental shelves, deep cave stalagmites, landscape images of a rain forest canopy, an ice sheet, a desert dune, a cross section of the earth with a molten ball at the core, a giant periodic table of the elements, all done in an art deco coloring of yellow and olive and tonal oranges, the drawings reminiscent of those in the World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook Horowitz's immigrant father had given him as a kid each year."
(7) What does this novel want to be: A murder mystery? An expose on the ills of the publishing world/vanity presses? A denunciation of second-tier universities? A criticism of liberal arts degrees? A lecture on philosophy? An indictment of authors who sell out? I don't know because it doesn't focus on one or two themes; it's just all over the place.
Then, there was something about a chimpanzee. I'm not even going there.
 Best Book I've Read All Year July 13, 2008
This book starts out slow and then takes off like a shot. You can't put it down. The first 70 pages or so are devoted to the character development of the self pitying professor and set in academia, as he relates or doesn't relate to staff/students. The dialogue and prose in these pages is just what you would expect from college professors, as they contemplate the meaning of life in a self indulgent, pompous manner. But once you get past this character and location development, the whole style of the book changes. It takes off and the villian is so disturbing in the manner of playing with the detective,his victims, the victims families, etc. This is not your light mystery fare. It's much more. The author doesn't resort to having his character ask obvious leading questions to guide the reader, he gives us credit to be smart enough to ask those questions ourselves. There is no boring distracting side story, the characters are completely believable, the dialogue is not contrived or trite, there isn't one useless sentence or word in the whole book. Everything hinges on something else. My favorite all time books were Night Sins and Guilty as Sin by Tami Hoag, but this one now is right up there with that. This is a great book, as long as you don't sink into despair with 2 of the characters in the beginning. I ended up reading this in one day, to find out how it would end.
The worst book I've ever read. April 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I believed a review that this book was brilliant. The characters are completely unlikeable and it didn't take long for me to wish I had never started reading it. I finished it only because I kept thinking that surely it would "get better" after all the reviews praised it so highly. It doesn't. Don't waste your time or money.
no better than ok; unappealing characters November 9, 2007
Ron Charles' review in the Post was enough to have me try "Death of a Writer". Unfortunately, I did not come to the same conclusion as Mr. Charles, as this was easily one of the weaker books I have read in the past year, with spots of excellent writing and commentary mixed in with a story lacking in drive, and populated by relatively uninteresting and unappealing characters with little redeeming value.
I will give Mr. Collins credit for beating up on academia, the hype machine for books, and the banality of normal existence. Who can argue when he implies that people say about books what other people have told them to think about books?
Regarding the murder mystery that connected with "Scream", I didn't really care about the true culprit or the low-life victim, and had guessed the perp well before the end anyway. Mr. Collins went overboard on Detective Ryder's character. Did he really need to have so many problems of his own? And what was with the ape and various other incidental detours? I suppose they justify some colorful English riffs, and the author can spin a paragraph, indeed. I prefer a little tighter story.
 Quite funny and biting October 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's apparent, now, that Michael Collins doesn't like American academia. In the previous book of his I read, the Resurrectionists, he had a petty thief redeem himself at a college in the upper Midwest because the denizens of this institution didn't recognize him for what he was. The current book is a more acerbic skewering of the institution: E. Robert Pendleton, a flash-in-the-pan novelist who's retreated into the refuge of a college in Indiana where he teaches meaningless writing courses to disinterested students while self-publishing "experimental" works no one reads. His rival from his college days, a successful novelist who has morphed himself into a writer of "coffee table books" who takes the safe, easy, commercial path in writing, which of course Pendleton hates and at the same time envies. As a result of this guy coming to give a lecture at the college, Pendleton tries to kill himself, and this sets in motion a series of other events that have all sorts of repercussions.
In the basement of his house, one of Pendleton's students, now taking charge of his affairs because he's only semi-functional, discovers a book he self-published some years before. The book recounts the murder of a small girl by a character not too different from Pendleton himself. The student decides that the book is worth another look from real, professional publishers, and enlists the help of the successful rival. The rival's feeling guilty about Pendleton's suicide attempt, so he makes his pitch to the publisher, and the book takes off. When it does, the police receive, anonymously, a package of clippings that make it clear that the writer of the book might have actually killed a girl in the fashion described in the book. Enter a detective, one with a great deal of baggage of his own, and the fun begins.
This is one of the strangest books I've read in recent years. The author has a real thing for the American liberal arts education system, which he clearly despises. He makes everyone involved in it in the book a villain or despicable at some level. I didn't really think the book actually had a protagonist, and as much as it does, he's flawed enough that at times you wonder if he's the killer, instead. The author doesn't spare any of the characters, and the ending of the book is frankly merciless. Even so, the book is worthwhile for its skewering of pretentious writing, and the academic system in America.
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