Keep Em Reading

How can an author keep a reader's interest? To keep them reading?

Entice them with just enough information that they're dying to find out more.

Anne Rice does just that in her book Angel Time... The story of a hitman who is just doing his job. But this is no ordinary hitman. He's a hitman haunted by his past. Conflicted.

This exerpt comes right after he's successful in completing a hit (i.e. murder) for his boss. A stranger shows up. Someone who seems to know everything about him...

The feeling of despair was almost blinding. I stopped in my tracks. We were under the campanario. It couldn't have been a more lovely spot. The ivy was trailing over the bells, and people were streaming by us on the pathway, to the left and to the right. I could hear the laughter and chatter from the nearby Mexican restaurant. I could hear the birds in the trees.

He stood close to me, looking at me intently, looking at me the way I'd want a brother to look at me, but I had no brother, because my little brother had died a long, long time ago. My fault. The original murders.

And this isn't the first time in the book Rice hints that there's something to the death of the hitman's brother. This reference is full of possibility. What does he mean? Did he actually kill the brother? Was it an accident? Why was it his fault?

Well, I won't give the secret away here. For those answers, you have to read the book.

Taken from:
Rice, Anne. Angel Time (2009), p. 44.

How did I rate this book? 3 stars