And the Winner Is …
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

While there may be variations in the specifics, getting a novel published tends to follow a pattern. You sit down with a blank page in front of you and put words together. (The great sports columnist Red Smith once said that writing was easy; you just put a piece of paper in the typewriter and open your veins.) When you finish telling your story, you mail it off to an agent or editor and pray more than a Franciscan monk.
Terry Shaw found a different way for his first book, “The Way Life Should Be” (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 284 pages, $14).
There is an internet community — with my vast technological knowledge stretched thin merely by trying to turn on my television set, that may not be what it’s called, but bear with me — called Gather.com, an interesting place to visit if you are a grown-up (the median age of its members is 40), since it appears to have more to do with books, cooking, politics and music than it does with showing the world how you look half-naked or what incredibly stupid things you can do even without the assistance of adult beverages. One thing that Gather.com decided to do was hold a contest for writers called “First Chapters Writing Competition.” It seems to have been successful, as it ran one for short stories and now has one for romance fiction. In between was one for popular fiction, and nothing is more popular than mysteries.
Basically an “American Idol” for writers, here’s how it worked. First chapters of 2,676 completed novels were submitted by writers who had never published a novel, unless it was self-published or produced by a vanity press (which should give you an idea of how highly regarded those books are). Members of Gather.com were invited to read them and vote for their favorites.
The top 20 were invited to submit second chapters, the top seven submitted chapter three. Enhanced by a Gather.com editorial team, the five best, or most popular books, were then sent to the Grand Prize jury, which is where it gets exciting. The winner would win a $5,000 prize, plus guaranteed publication by Simon & Schuster’s trade paperback imprint, Touchstone (with an additional $5,000 advance), as well as in-store promotion at the Borders chain. I know writers with a dozen books to their credit whose books still seem to be protected by the Official Secrets Act at Borders, so that’s a pretty good jump start to a career.
Mr. Shaw’s first novel is set in a small fishing village on the coast of Maine, so it is possible to anticipate the arrival of Jessica Fletcher at any moment. It opens with the sort of thing one doesn’t expect in pretty New England locales: Paul Stanwood, a respected member of the community, enters a public bathhouse in a park famous as a gay pickup spot. When someone follows him in, he is surprised to recognize the man. He is also surprised to get knocked down by a crushing blow to his collarbone by a heavy steel Maglite, followed by a vicious barrage that kills him.
John Quinn, who owns the local newspaper, has been a friend of the murdered man for most of his life and begins to investigate, confident that Stanwood, married to Quinn’s former girlfriend, could not have been the victim of a hate crime. His search for another motive uncovers some shady real estate manipulations worth millions, which puts him and his wife in danger.
While “The Way Life Should Be” may not be as original as the way it secured publication, it is plotted carefully and maintains a brisk pace, perhaps influenced by the James Patterson school of storytelling with most paragraphs one or two lines long with little opportunity to get bogged down.
There are, however, still too many words. There are common (and somewhat amateurish) stylistic flaws, such as ever-changing points of view, so many adjectives that one wishes that his thesaurus had been snatched away when he was still young, and an irritating habit of telling what someone is going to do just before they do it: “In the meantime, she was going to take a nap, so she curled up in a comforter on the couch and went to sleep.”
It’s not a bad start for Mr. Shaw, but still not quite what books should be.
Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.