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It is quite common for TV shows to drop you into the middle of their character relationships. The team is all together doing their stuff and the viewer gets dropped in the middle of it. Obviously the writer of the pilot for such a show has to do things to introduce the characters. Adding a new person to an existing team is a common ploy. The networks like this for pace reasons. They are trying to avoid the lack of action that a "getting to know you" show may require. Not all shows do this by any means but to my eyes it is becoming more common. When they do use this technique, sooner or later there is usually a show where origins are explored as flashbacks - I'm sure The Simpsons have had half a dozen of them by now.
In the written form, there is more time to develop relationships from the start so that is the way authors go for it. It just makes sense really. Christopher Fowler does not see it that way. He has written a number of books with his Bryant and May characters ("Oh just like the matches" "Nothing like them at all!"). In Full Dark House, the majority of the action takes place in flashback as May remembers their first case together while investigating a bombing in modern London. That first case happened in 1940 during The Blitz and involved a number of strange murders.
Fowler writes about London. It is the real strength of his books. This time the setup looks perfect - modern London with terrorists and out of control elements contrasted with WW2 London. All that and a spooky and mysterious building too - it should be perfect. But it is too much. There are too many elements and they just get in the way of each other. In fact the whole book feels cluttered. For the first time in one of Fowler novels, I didn't feel that the setting was a real character in the story, although you can tell it is supposed to work that way. It doesn't help that the murder mystery feels like a reject from one of those cheesy '60s Hammer Horror movies. It did however give me a greater appreciation of Orpheus in the Underworld and that can't be entirely bad.
In the written form, there is more time to develop relationships from the start so that is the way authors go for it. It just makes sense really. Christopher Fowler does not see it that way. He has written a number of books with his Bryant and May characters ("Oh just like the matches" "Nothing like them at all!"). In Full Dark House, the majority of the action takes place in flashback as May remembers their first case together while investigating a bombing in modern London. That first case happened in 1940 during The Blitz and involved a number of strange murders.
Fowler writes about London. It is the real strength of his books. This time the setup looks perfect - modern London with terrorists and out of control elements contrasted with WW2 London. All that and a spooky and mysterious building too - it should be perfect. But it is too much. There are too many elements and they just get in the way of each other. In fact the whole book feels cluttered. For the first time in one of Fowler novels, I didn't feel that the setting was a real character in the story, although you can tell it is supposed to work that way. It doesn't help that the murder mystery feels like a reject from one of those cheesy '60s Hammer Horror movies. It did however give me a greater appreciation of Orpheus in the Underworld and that can't be entirely bad.