Losing one's taste for authors

To me, some authors are like cantaloupe.

I thought about this a couple of times this week when I had meals that included a fruit cup. In both there were generous portions of cantaloupe. Cantaloupe usually tastes good to me on the first bite. On the second bite it's OK. After that it seems to taste a little worse with each bite until even the odor turns my stomach.

And so some authors are like that. They appeal to me at first, then gradually (or suddenly) lose their appeal.

James Lee Burke

One of these is James Lee Burke. At one time I was enthusiastic about his Dave Robicheaux mysteries. Then one novel — I've forgotten which one — made me realize I had had enough. As I recall it was the violence that turned me off. Robicheaux took a beating just one time too many. It's not that the detective wasn't tough enough, but he just seemed stupid, always saying and doing the very things that would set off the bad guys. Robert Parker's Spenser acts like this as well, but at least Spenser is smart enough to have Hawk around to back him up. Robicheaux, in this novel at least, just took the beatings.

Clive Cussler is another author who entertained me for a time. Then one day I realized his books were crap, and that was that.

I read quite a number of the Pendergast novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, including three in rapid succession three or four years ago. Then I realized the main mystery in the series, what really happened to Pendergast's wife, might never be resolved. It was just being used as a cliffhanger to keep me and other readers coming back for more.  I finally decided not to come back.

I stopped reading Jo Nesbo after just one novel for the same reason. The solution of the book's central mystery was left for another book, and probably another and another. I prefer mysteries and thrillers in which the heroes actually get to the bottom of things, then face another challenge next time around.