Why do you have to lie to me??

So, I got my first proofreading assignment for the new publishing company last week, and spent almost all of yesterday working on it. The problem is, the author committed what I've always said is the worst sin a writer can commit... she put herself in the hero's POV and lied to me.

Who sits down and thinks about themselves and lies about what they have or haven't done? No one. So if I can't trust that you're telling me the truth, how can I trust that anything else I read is real? Or why should I waste my time reading your stuff, if you can't even utilize a simply literary technique like foreshadowing, or developing internal conflict? I can understand wanting to keep stuff from your reader. Whodunnit, if you're writing a mystery, the big, deep, dark secret that is going to play an integral role to your black moment... sure, some of that stuff you don't want to splat out there in chapter one. But come on... don't tell me all along that *this* didn't happen.... and then at the very end, have Dark Helmet jump out and say "Fooled You!". I'm not gonna be impressed by you fooling me, I'm gonna be damn pissed off that you wasted my time. There are other ways to get around this, without having to lie...

And I guess what's really making me mad about the whole thing, is editors are buying books and letting authors get away with this. It's not right.

So, let's look at some examples where the author kept me completely confused until the very end, WITHOUT lying... Two books I read recently, Larry Brooks' Serpent's Dance and Holly Lisle's Midnight Rain did this very, very well. Both of these books had romantic elements, were in various POVs and had a mystery running throughout that kept me guessing. Not only did it keep me guessing, but it had me reading frantically, challenged, intrigued as to how things were going to turn out.

In Midnight Rain, there were a couple of ways Holly could have gone... with the paranormal, or with a rational explanantion, that no one, not the police, not the FBI, not the hero or heroine, er, well, except me *grin*, but I'm annoying that way, was able to think of. What she didn't do, was put me in the villain's POV and lie to me about who he was and what he was doing. No, she dropped clues, she dropped red herrings, and it kept. me. reading. Which, really, is kinda the point of a book... And by the end, when the villain had done what I thought he had done, tho not exactly how I thought he'd done it... I was satisfied. I closed the book and sent a mental thank you to Holly for keeping me amused and intrigued for several days.

Now, in Serpent's Dance, the characters Paul and Damian are the same person, although for the first pile of chapters, you see both of their POVs. (Don't worry, I'm not spoiling anything, you find this out pretty early on...) What Larry *didn't* do, however, was put me in Paul's POV and tell me he absosmurfly wasn't Damian. Nope, not at all, except, oh yeah, I am. So there. No... he showed me both, showed me other characters and had me thinking, hey, I wonder if that Paul guy is really Damian... nah, I'm wrong, but maybe... hey, i was right! (er, sorry, maybe I did spoil that...) But by showing me what he wanted me to know when he wanted me to know it, and leaving out what he didn't, I was engrossed, enthralled and I kept reading, waiting to find out who was screwing who (both figuratively and literally :) ). And again, at the end, when all was explained, I was happy and fulfilled.

You see? It can be done, if you do it right.

But, if you're lazy, you can create a mystery lover who appears only in the dark and then you can show me the POV of the character I know is really the mystery lover, and you can lie to me and tell me it's not, and then at the end tell me he really was and all that crap when I said he wasn't? yeah, too bad, so sad.

The thing is... the whole mystery lover thing could have made a great internal conflict.... "Hey crap, turns out I'm a in-the-dark-only mystery lover to the woman I love, only she's not too happy with me in real life. Now how do I tell her I love her and that I've been lying to her about dinging her in the dark the whole time. Man, she's gonna be pissed. Well, a fine kettle of fish I've gotten myself into... dumbass!" Now *that* would have kept me reading. *That* would have been interesting...

But no, yet one more writer chose lazy over literary. I'm not impressed.