Do you ever read a published novel and wonder — how did this get published when I can't get my own work out there? Well, I'm a third of the way through Dead and Buried, Howard Engel's 1990 Benny Cooperman mystery, and I'm wondering exactly that. This is as lifeless a book as I have ever read. I keep waiting for it to pick up, to catch a spark. The reviews on the covers are really positive but I can't find much to recommend it so far.

Then I think of what my friend, Lesley, who at that time was involved in the publishing business, said to me after reading a draft of my own first novel. I don't know if she was just being kind but she said something like, "Mark, this is good enough to be published but it is not good enough to get you published." In other words, if you had a strong publishing record, this book would be fine. But it's not good enough to convince a publisher to take a risk by taking on an unproven writer like you.

So maybe that's what is at work here. Engel's book is publishable because his publisher knows there's already an established audience for Cooperman novels that will buy it no matter what. If this were Engel's first novel, it probably wouldn't be published.

So what do I learn from this? Well, I guess the first lesson is that Howard Engel has written at least one book that is better than anything I've written. But we knew that already. The real lesson is that the first breakthrough is the toughest and you have to convince the publisher that your first book is good enough to build an audience from scratch.

I'll be writing a fuller review of this book when (and if) I finish it. So stay tuned.

Tags: Engel, cooperman, Dead and Buried