Mystery Hijacking

I am a semi-closeted fan of mystery novels; I hate to admit that I occasionally stray from literature to illicit purchases from Shoppers Drugmart; it's not good for one's image. However I am open about the fact that as a pre-teen I read all of Agatha Christie's novels and Hercule Poirot is my favourite fictional detective.

I have accepted that my reading choices have a direct connection to the mental activity going on in my life. The more intellectually engaging my life is, the less intellectually engaging my reading material and vice versa. When I was 'studying' for my final year of high school exams I devoured the Thorn Birds, which was 'ingeniously' placed inside the pages of my extension math text book.

All this has been well and good, until I recently encountered a 'mystery hijacking'.

Despite my appreciation of mystery tomes, I can't stomach romance novels. As a mentor; who had been a librarian forced to read one as research; once put it 'Gawd, everything in those books just heaves and throbs, heaves and throbs'.. arghhh!

I also always think of the woman I saw late one night. Rather dowdy and a lot plump, downtrodden looking, she sat on a bench waiting for a bus going to the wrong end of town, one hand stuffing fist-fulls of potato chips into her mouth the other holding a romance novel she was intently reading. To me that is the epitome of tragedy.

I digress, sorry!

There I was happily immersed in my mystery when the unthinkable happened. Suddenly the plot to catch the killer before he struck again was hijacked, HIJACKED, by pages and pages of heaving, throbbing 'love-making' descriptions. It had no plot purpose or any purposes at all and I was outraged! I quickly skipped forward and skipped forward and skipped forward, more than a chapter's worth of pages, until I finally got back to the mystery solving. I couldn't understand what happened let alone why.

After I had finished the book I read the authors' bio on the back page and my hijacking was explained. My author had recently started writing mystery novels but had also previously won numerous awards for her romance offerings. This author must have gotten muddled half-way through the book, so in a panic resorted to her old stomping ground of throbbing and heaving to get her through. My mystery hijacking of my mystery was solved!

For others who like to indulge in the occasional murder mystery take heed, always read the author's bio before you buy, save yourself from a potential heaving, throbbing hijacking!