[crebel]

I have quit reading a couple of series when it has seemed the author's writing style completely changed to the point the characters did not even seem like the same people I had come to know.  

Two series I can think of where that happened are Patricia Cornwall's Kay Scarpetta medical examiner series and Robert Tannebaum's Butch Karp crime/thriller novels.  At some point in both series, they just went off the rails and felt like they had been written by someone else.

With the Cornwall books it happened in a single book, Black Notice.  I hated it.  I have tried at least one other book since that one and they are just not the same.  With the Tannebaum books, I have continued to read them, but the later books are not as believable as the early books (like Gertie said, they stoop to sensationalism).  When you start rolling your eyes while you are reading and just skimming pages to get to the end, it's probably time to let them go.

It must be difficult to keep writing about the same characters, let them grow, find fresh yet still interesting scenarios in which to involve them, but many authors do it successfully.  A few, not so well.

 

[crebel]

Was that the one about the Werewolf? It was so "out there" - I agree. I haven't read a lot of Cornwall - but Black Notice did nothing to make me want to.

Yes, the "loup-garou". Her books always had graphic violence, not unexpected for forensic mysteries, but that one was so dark it was more like a horror novel and she seems to have remained in that vein.