What are Some Book Examples of the AC/DC Rule?

Quick: What’s the most famous album by AC/DC?

If you, like me, instantly thought of the 1980 album Back in Black, you are not alone. It’s the band’s top-selling album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. But that seminal album never reached Number 1 on the Billboard charts. That was the next album, For Those About To Rock.

A few years ago on the Hit Parade podcast, an episode dropped entitled “The AC/DC Rule.” This podcast discusses music history and quirky things about the chart performances of various songs and bands. It spent two episodes discussing what they dubbed The AC/DC Rule. Put simply, it’s this: there are famous albums by major musicians, ones we all know and love, with our favorite songs on them, but those albums are not always the ones that topped the album chart. It was the next album, the album that rode the coattails of the more-famous album to the top of the charts but may not be as fondly remembered or sold as many copies.

The episode details how Cat Stevens, Boston, Billy Joel, and others all experienced the AC/DC Rule. It happens for movies as well. The second Austin Powers movie, The Spy Who Shagged Me, scored more money in its opening weekend than the debut film did in its entire run.

The pattern exists for the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the second Hangover movie, and others. I can’t remember all the other albums the host, Chris Molanphy, discusses, but it’s a curious thing.

Which naturally got me to thinking about this rule for books. A few instantly jump to mind. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was a massive success, but that was Brown’s fourth book. As well as Da Vinci Code sold, his follow-up, The Lost Symbol, sold a million copies on the first day. Yes, you read that correctly. Now, Lost Symbol ultimately didn’t outperform Da Vinci Code, but you can see the pattern.

I think it’s safe to say this kind of thing applies to debut authors as well. Be it music or books, it’s the dreaded sophomore slump. The debut album by Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear Window, sold more than 21 million copies. Their second album, Fairweather Johnson, sold only 3 million. Kinda funny to write "only" in that sentence. On the book side of the ledger, The Martian by Andy Weir and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline both took the world by storm but their next books did not meet with the same success.

I’ve been trying to determine if there are other books that fall into this category so that’s what I’ve been pondering this week. Can y’all help me?

A High School Reunion and a Murder: Girl Most Likely by Max Allan Collins

by

Scott D. Parker

Last week, I mentioned a new way to consume a story, via a Kindle ebook and its corresponding audiobook. The book in question was Girl Most Likely by Max Allan Collins. Well, I’ve finished the novel and here is the promised review.

The lead character is Krista Larson, a twenty-eight-year-old who serves as the police chief for Galena, Illinois, a small, Midwestern tourist town. This makes her simultaneously the youngest police chief in the country and the youngest female chief. As we’re told throughout the novel, her department consists only of a dozen people, herself included.

Her father, Keith, was also a cop, but one from a larger town across the river. They live together now in the wake of her mom’s passing. They have a good relationship, nothing like the oil-and-water relationships you see on TV or in other books.

Speaking of TV, Collins intentionally set out to write “an American variation of the [Kurt] Wallander novels, and such Nordic TV mini-series as The Bridge, the Killing, and (again) Wallander.” Being a fan of those programs myself, that was pretty much all it took for me to download the ebook and audiobook and start reading.

There’s a certain style of mystery—mostly thrillers, I guess—where there’s running on page one or a murder on page one and that sets the entire tale in motion. That’s here in this book, too, but via a fun writerly quirk: all the times the killer in on stage, Collins writes those scenes in second person, that is, from the killer’s point of view. It serves more the one purses. The obvious one is that you get a peek inside the killer’s mind, what drives the killer to kill. The other obvious thing is that Collins hides the identity of the killer. By the time a reader reaches the end of the novel and know who did, it’s fun to return to those chapters and see how the veteran writer spooled out the clues.

Other than the opening chapter, the bulk of the novel sets the stage via its characters and surrounding environment. It’s a day-to-day life of Krista and her friends as they prepare to attend their ten year high school reunion. We get nice portraits of the folks who never left small town life as well as those who return from bigger cities. As the title of the book indicates, there is one character—Astrid Lund—who is the girl most likely to succeed, and boy has she. Astrid (a nice nod to the Nordic) has blossomed into a stunner who works in TV broadcast news up in Chicago. She broke up more than one relationship back in high school and her presence at the reunion threatens those same people. Most everyone reacts to her in one way or another. She’s like the sun: her gravity either pushes or pulls all her classmates.

What I found particularly fun is how Collins weaves the characters in and out of the story in such a way that you almost wonder if you are merely reading a traditional drama rather than a murder mystery. You kind of have an idea of who is going to be killed, but you still wonder when it'll happen, but when it does, it's visceral. Three people end up dead in this story, so this small town police chief ends up having a triple murder investigation. She draws on her father’s experience as a homicide detective while keeping the investigation local and not calling in the state police.

As a writer, describing a character is always a challenge. How much do you give? How to you give it? Do you do it every time a character walks on stage? Collins does it nearly every time, but he usually dispatches the description in a sentence or two. Interestingly, he goes a step further and details their voice, usually in the form of a musical notation: his baritone, her soprano. Being a musician like Collins, I dug that and, frankly, it never even occurred to me to do that.

Like the BBC shows that inspired Collins to write this story, this is a full-on police procedural. Krista and her dad ask lots of questions and follow leads. You definitely have to be in a mood for this kind of story, and it’s where I have an issue with the sub-title: A thriller. I don’t consider this a thriller at all. Sure, there is the ending, but when I think thriller, I think lots of running and shooting and more running and reading so fast that you quickly start to turn the pages or increase the narration speed. Girl Most Likely moves forward in a determined manner where you know you’re being given some red herrings and try and decipher the clues before the characters.

I enjoyed Girl Most Likely quite a bit. It was exactly the type of story I wanted and it easily met my expectations. In fact, I liked it so much that I already downloaded both the ebook and audiobook of Girl Can’t Help It, the second novel featuring Krista Larson. And, since I enjoy reading “seasonally,” I was pleased to note Girl Can’t Help It takes place around Labor Day. I’ll give you zero guesses when I start the book.

What If Anthony Bourdain Was a Spy?

by

Scott D. Parker

Every now and then, you hear a concept for a book and it instantly hooks you. This is one of those books. 

What if an Anthony Bourdain-type celebrity chef who hosts a TV travel show is also a CIA spy?

Hooked? Well, I was. You see, I really enjoyed Bourdain’s writings, his TV shows, and his way of seeing the world. His shows were appointment television. His books—always get the audio because he reads them—were bought on day one. So it should come as no surprise that when Tom Straw’s new book was announced, I got it on day one.

Prepare the Narrator

Sebastian Pike is the Bourdain stand-in in THE ACCIDENTAL JOE, the new novel by Tom Straw. In various interviews, podcasts, and his author event here in Houston, Straw talked about the genesis of the novel and how a tweak to the prose brought the novel to life. 

Originally he had written the book in third-person POV but had included various “voiceover” monologues by Pike. Early readers enjoyed the novel, but really enjoyed it when Pike spoke directly to the readers. So Straw revamped the entire novel and made Pike the narrator. 

That proved to be the secret ingredient. Pike speaks in the same type of wise-cracking, acerbic, snarky language Bourdain used to engross his audiences. I’ll be honest: when I was reading my hardcopy of the novel, it was Bourdain’s voice I heard in my mind. Later, as I listened to Straw narrate his own novel, he puts just enough of a tonality that you could basically hear Bourdain’s voice. It was pretty magical.

Add an Extra Spicy Co-Star

As the story opens, Pike is in need of a new producer. His last one took some “personal time.” In walks uber-fan Cameron Nova, a person who loves and has seemingly memorized every episode of “Hangry Globe,” Pike’s show. She’s the perfect fit and sparks instantly ignite.

But she’s not all that she seems. Turns out she works for the CIA and there’s a top vital mission for which Pike is an essential ingredient. She wants Pike to use his show to lure in an Eastern European strongman and exfiltrate a compromised CIA asset. Contrarian that he is, Pike initially refuses, but Cammie dangles an enticing carrot: if he helps the CIA, she’ll give him info on his dead fiance, killed in an explosion a year prior.

What’s a celebrity chef to do? 

Apply Heat That Really Hurts

When you hear a premise like this one, you might think that our hero narrator might just float above the story and not really do anything. Well, I’m here to tell you Pike is an active participant in this adventure, and it's not without genuine peril. It surprised me, a happy surprise because it made the stakes that much higher. 

Sprinkle in the Narrative Accents

Tom Straw ghostwrote the first seven Richard Castle novels and I fell in love with his style when I didn’t even know his name. He brings a lot of that narrative swagger with him to the antics of Pike and Nova, especially the slow burn of their relationship. It is organic, taking slow, small steps, and it boils over as the story progresses. Oh, please don’t tell me this is a spoiler. It’s baked into the premise.

He also does this thing where certain words stand in for a greater description. One example is a description of plants climbing up wooden latticework. Some writers might spend a sentence or two describing how the plants intertwine with the wooden slats. Instead, Straw uses the verb “latticed” and that’s it. But that’s all you need. We readers fill in the rest. Look, I know this isn’t some major revelation—pulp writers did it all the time back in the day—but I really took notice of it in the Castle books and Straw does it here in THE ACCIDENTAL JOE. I almost want to scan the book again and just take note of the verbs he uses.

Why would I read this book again?

Because Sebastian Pike is one of my favorite new amateur detectives. I love stories where a non-detective becomes embodied in a larger, dangerous story. I love it when what this non-detective brings to the table—cooking and TV production in this case—actually helps solve the case. I love it when we meet a character that just feels like you’ve watched every episode of his fictional TV show for years. 

You know what’s also fun about THE ACCIDENTAL JOE? All the little in-jokes Straw throws into the mix. There is one super-obvious character name—complete with the character’s nickname—that’ll have you chuckling. IYKYK. 

THE ACCIDENTAL JOE is a fantastic book. Highly recommended.