Reader Mailbag: Memorable Scenes in Novels

In the July newsletter I asked readers for memorable scenes in novels.

Two scenes I mentioned were:

Transfer of Power by Vince Flynn: When Mitch has a job to do, however he sees a women(Anna) in distress. He’s being urged to carry on with his mission……but then he makes the right choice.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch: The internet chat room.

Here were the readers responses:

Peggy: The Fallen Angel by Daniel Silva

My favorite scene is in Chapter 22.

As part of a convoluted plot that begins with the murder of a Vatican museum curator, Gabriel Allon, Israeli art restorer, assassin & spy, and his long-time friend, Eli Lavon, surveillance artist by trade and archaeologist by profession, acquire a piece of ancient Greek pottery. In order for them to use it, though, it must be in pieces .The artifact sits in a duffel bag on a table while Gabriel and Eli briefly debate which one of them will do the honors. Finally, Gabriel sweeps the bag and its contents onto the floor. After opening the bag to view the damage, Eli mutters, “Murderer.”

It’s these small, random bits of wry humor in his timely, often deadly serious thrillers which make Daniel Silva one of my favorite authors.

Chris: 11/22/63 by Stephen King: When the main character finally gets to the event he’s been trying, for most of the book, to prevent. There’s a lot of tension building up to that point.

Linda: I read this book a long time ago. It was “Sleeping with the Enemy” by Price. When the husband finally catches up to her as she has been hidden at a college town. His evilness makes me remember that scene and how creepy he was. Then I watched the movie and it made it even more thrilling. I have finally finished all the Finder books. Boy, what an author. My last one that I read was probably my favorite. “The Switch” Great plot and characters and so not a book to put down. Finished in a day. Could not stop.

Elizabeth: One of my favorite scenes was in the Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. Bourne has amnesia from a head injury but he discovers he can fight. A doctor is helping him to recover and throws him a gun telling him to break it down. He does it without thinking what he is doing and realizes he knows a lot about guns.
Unfortunately this scene was left out of the movie!

Wendy: Sophie’s Choice, the scene where she must choose which child to keep. The anguish and heart rending reasoning she uses for her choice haunts me to this day. I first read the book in the 70s long before there was ever a thought for children in my life. I was just blown away.

Janet: This goes back to the early/mid 80s. My older sister was a new mom whose husband had just got orders for them to go to Clark AFB in the Philippines. I was just out of USAF boot camp and in California. We wrote regularly and shared book ideas. She had written me about a book called Deception by Judith Michael in maybe 1984. I was in North Carolina and they had orders to move to there. I was thrilled.

They arrived and we swapped books, I had orders to transfer to South Dakota at the time. I left and started the book by Judith Michaels on the long two leg flight to S Dakota. I arrived in S Dakota and the first thing I had to do was find a phone to call Sue in N Caroling to say OMG the yacht blew up! I know it drained the minutes on my calling card and we decided at that time stamps were cheaper than long distance calls.

Donald: For myself it is Uncompromising Honor by Mike Weber. The final fighting sequence when Honor allows herself to fight without constraint is vivid in my mind as a visualize the calculated and methodical destruction against the powers that be. I find myself re-reading the book over and over without loss of enjoyment.

Caroline: Wow, hard to pick just one memorable scene especially if you’ve read the Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louis Penny. However, the scene that stuck with me the most comes from “The Long Way Home” in which Gamache has retired to the village of Three Pines, and found a peace “to make the wounded whole.” His neighbor, Clara Morrow, a talented artist, shares her wounds that no balm can heal until she can find Peter, her troubled artist husband who has failed to come home as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache’s help to find him and persuades him to join the search which takes them deeper and deeper into Québec, deeper and deeper into the soul of Peter Morrow, a man desperate to recapture his fame as an artist no matter what the cost. The scene I will never forget takes place in an lonely cabin located at the very mouth of the St. Lawrence river in an area so desolate, so damned, the first mariners called it the land God gave to Cain. Despite Gamache’s adamant insistence that Clara not follow him to the cabin where Peter made be held hostage by an old mentor with a terrible secret, she follows and ultimately costs Peter his life when he thrusts himself in the way of a fatal knife attack on Clara by the mad mentor. What is so ironic aboutt his desperate scene is throughout the entire search for Peter, Clara’s one hope is to find him alive and ready to reunite with her and it is her actions that ultimately extinguish that hope forever. If I were Clara, I don’t know if I could live with such a burden. I’ll never forget that tragic scene as it reminds me so much of one my most feared axioms…”The road to hell is paved by good intentions.”

Amy: A scene in John Lescroart’s “A Certain Justice” (1995, first Abe Glitsky book) had a profound effect on me. The same continued scene gives two prime examples of how misleading appearances can be. First, a black businessman is mistaken for a car thief in the midst of racial unrest in the city. After a mob strings him up, a young white man rushes in trying to help by throwing his arms around him to lift him up and tries to reach a knife up to him. A reporter shoots a picture that appears on the front page and everyone thinks from the photo that he was pulling down on the victim to kill him. [How often do we see such quick judgments made today on social media? I try to always withhold judgment without all the facts when seeing any news story or social media post, always remembering that scene and the deadly consequences of assumptions.]

Barbara: You asked: This month I am asking what is the most memorable scene or scenes in a book that you have read?

Now we want to avoid spoilers where possible – so if you can be vague then great. And please write it with the title of the book and author first so people can see that and stop reading if they don’t want spoilers.

I answer:

SPOILER alert!

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files #7–Dead Beat

When Harry Dresden must fight a Zombie army on the Northwestern U campus, he discusses the problem with another person.

The only way, he says, to fight a zombie with other zombies but he can’t raise zombies–it is against his moral code. So he resurrects Sue, the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever discovered. On display at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. He mounts 2 saddles on her (one for him and one for another person necessary for the spell) and they take off.

And he makes observation, the best and funniest line I have ever read in a novel:

“Tyrannosaurus Rex can really haul ass!”