Blood Trail by C.J.Box

I found a book in the laundry room that caught my attention.  I had already reviewed the movie The WhistleBlower on facebook and blogger so that there seems to be so much similarity between the movie and the book that I do not find it a coincidence to be there at all. I really do like this book and the sympathy and the empathy that the author shows.  There is enough real twists and turns to this plot to keep one interested in the solution that I read it as quickly as I could after I got past that first chapter that drew me into the book.   Because I have read so many Tony Hillerman books I recognized some similarities in his mystery novel and this one so that is why I could sense that the murderer's thoughts were discernible.  Only certain kinds of hunters are this perceptive about nature.

The first chapter did intrigue me because I also use hunting and survival tactics in a forest in my book about Alexander. This book taught me a few things that I had not known or considered. The author does give credit to David Diaz for his book Tracking:Signs of Man, Signs of Hope, and to Michael Chesbro's Wilderness Evasion.  I never considered researching tracking until I read this book either.

I wrote off the top of my head and except for using history books by a few historians, I wrote my first draft from my own imagination and intuition.

So this book more or less brought me up to snuff realizing how much  I have yet to do to fully develop a compelling book.  But I am not being too hard on myself...I just needed the excuse to write some thoughts about Alexander that I wanted to explore and so I did do just that. I am rereading some of my recent efforts and realize that again I am being skeletal and trying to create an outline more than actually get into the story.  I am trying to decide how I will go about doing this because frankly, there is so much to develop yet.    I have a few very good scenes, and my book is gradually becoming an adult book more than a child's book.   Yet, I have to write with children in mind.  That controls some of the harshness of it.  Yet, because Alexander was a child when he took command, it means that he became an adult very soon in life.  I am thinking all this aloud now because it is very important to understand what he was like when he first took over at his father's death and how young and idealistic he had been at that age.  Despite the fact that he had participated and even led in a few battles as fundamentally a child, he assumed leadership based upon the love of his soldiers for him, and it enabled him to keep them loyal to him while they conquered their enemies. 

The point is that in reading this book, I see how this author has used his characters well to develop his plot, and to make us stay with the book. Had he not done that, the murder itself and the victims themselves would not matter to us. I have to develop my characters for those who do not know who Alexander is.