At the risk of repeating myself …

I’m over 60,000 words into the second novel in my crime thriller trilogy. One of the issues I’ve been grappling with is the need or otherwise to remind the reader of what happened to whom in the first book. Not that my second book is a sequel but most of the characters reappear and they all have a backstory. I’ve decided that very little needs to be repeated. The reader, I feel confident, will get it. I was persuaded in this when I read the late, great William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw trilogy. He’s a writer much respected by crime writers around the world. Rightly so. McIlvanney finds little need to remind readers about his characters as the trilogy opens out like a dark flower. Of course Laidlaw, his main protagonist, continues with his annoying ways, his endearing habits and goes about his police work in the same cerebral way. But we are reminded only subtly and rarely of his adversaries and battles from the previous book(s).

I know my characters very well now. I know how they will act and react. I hoping that many readers will soon join me in that familiarity. They’ll find very little reminders.