In the yard, just lying
there in the green grass,
about five or six feet from
the curb, a day
after garbage pickup,
I found three pages
of text ripped from the middle of
a trashy novel, ripped from
the middle of the pages,
so no heading was discernible,
no way of deciphering
what the novel was
or who the writer might be.
I say trashy, both literally and
subjectively, because on
the one hand, this was trash
that someone
(maybe the garbage collector?)
had discarded in the general
direction of my front lawn,
and on the other hand:
“Do the cops seriously
think he killed Rand?”
“It’s just a–“
“I know, hypothesis.”
“I suppose you know Troy Turner
was murdered,”
and then there’s a tear in the page,
someone “nodded” and then
the first guy says,
“Think there’s a connection?”
I’ve got six pages on both sides
of the three ripped out sheets
of this kind of shit writing,
where all the relevant details are
delivered through the dialogue.
Not an exaggeration. Six pages of
dialogue, punctuated only briefly
here and there by absolutely pointless
physical business: He glanced down
at his food. He wiped salt grains
from the top of the shaker.
Oh, by the glorious wonders of the
search engine now assisted by AI,
all I have to do is paste in this tiny
bit of shit dialogue and I know
what this book is and who wrote it.
Far be it from me to disparage fellow
writers; all I’m willing to say is that
this is the 19th book in a series about
one particular character–I’m guessing,
a detective, a private I? Who knows.
Whoever the guy is, he finds himself
in the middle of a murder mystery.
I need to say that first part again:
the 19th book in a series. Hold my
beer while I do one more search:
19 out of 41 as of February of 2026.
I do a little bit more digging and learn
that the first book in this series was
published in 1985. I do a little bit
of math. That’s a book a year for 41
years–one must assume: drafted,
revised, published and marketed,
a process that can take some writers
and some novels years to move through.
To add insult to injury, apparently,
this guy’s crappy books are best sellers.
You might be saying, hey Michael Jarmer,
Writer Guy, you can’t judge a book, let
alone an entire series of 41 books,
by three ripped out pages from a novel’s
middle that were surreptitiously dumped
by the garbage collector on to your lawn.
And I say, oh yes, you can, and I have.
michael jarmer 