Ric Frances’ latest work, Lightning Strikes Twice is a detective/thriller that follows the kidnapping of an eight-year-old boy and his mother from their home, where 2 years ago, the boy’s six-year-old cousin, Cora Michaels was kidnapped from and found murdered. Cora’s case was assigned to the best detective in southeast Louisiana, Richard Urbanax.
Unfortunately, Urbanax was unable to bring her killer/killers to justice and retired early. But after tragedy shakes up the Michaels’ home yet again, Detective Urbanax is back to find the boy and his mother before it’s too late. He is sure there is a connection between the two cases. With the help of his daughter/protégé and techie, twin sons. Frances’ writing is intriguing and engaging, keeping the readers invested with every lead and possible suspects.
According to MasterClass, “literary tropes are time-tested methods of employing figurative language to enrich a written work.” These tropes provide some sense of comfort as we read about grisly murders and crimes in crime fiction. As per Diane Zhang from BookBub, here are some of the most timeless tropes and the classic novels that introduced them:
· The Cerebral Psychologist (Red Dragon by Thomas Harris)
It’s difficult to imagine the field of thrillers and crime fiction today without the fictional psychologists and psychiatrists who have played unforgettable roles in bringing some of literature’s most chilling villains to justice — especially after Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon introduced the world to FBI profiler Will Graham, best known for successfully bringing in (and you may be familiar with the name) Hannibal Lecter.
· The Unreliable Narrator (The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe)
From Gone Girl to The Woman in the Window, the unreliable narrator has become almost expected in certain genres — particularly domestic thrillers. Not knowing when or whether to trust the source of the story throws the narrative off-kilter in a way perfectly suited to twisty reads that grapple with the ideas of reality and deception. Perhaps the most iconic of all unreliable narrators is the tortured, haunted killer in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, who has made his presence felt in contemporary books
· The Black Sheep (Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie)
A recurring idea in crime fiction is that monsters walk among us — and even the most innocuous character might end up being the villain. But what if the killer is someone in your own family? Agatha Christie’s classic Five Little Pigs tackles just this question, as Hercule Poirot revisits an old murder case and roots out the real killer among members of a household, and many modern reads similarly dwell on complicated family bonds.
· The Irascible Detective (A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle)
Poor Watson always seems to be trailing about a mile behind Sherlock during every case they investigate, but any fan would agree: We’re happy that the detective’s brusque retorts and sardonic observations never seemed to drive his loyal companion away. Watson’s confounded questions often reflected the reader’s own, and we’re just as happy as he is to finally get the full explanation behind Holmes’s magical powers of deduction.
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