One thing I love about mystery series is how comfortable they can make you feel, like warm toasty slippers on a cold day. I love the development of the main characters over a series of books, and how there are surprising discoveries even for a character you think you know, partly because no one is totally consistent, and also because it forces you not to become too complacent as a reader. I finished Louise Penny's new book a month ago, and discovered after all this time, I don't really like her main character, Inspector Gamache. That's okay, she has a large cast, but something that had been nagging me throughout the books came to the forefront in this one: he's too rigid, and too bound by a moral standard that seems false or the result of inordinate pride. He's tender hearted, so I appreciate that quality even more, but he irritates me as well. And now I'm reading Craig Johnson's newest mystery about Walt Longmire, and all of a sudden, we get a picture of him when he was very young and first married, as well as the present older man thinking of retiring. It's refreshing, and fleshes out his portrait in ways that expand the character interestingly.
Well, I suppose in real life the same thing happens. You think you know a friend, and they surprise you, or your feelings transform as time goes on. We are not static; we are dynamic, changing beings and must be reckoned with again and again. In great fiction, the characters are that fully human.
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