Cliff Hangers
Okay, I'm old. I grew up before television but the Saturday afternoon matinees were staples. Every matinee started with a "selected short" that was sometimes the Lone Ranger or Buck Rogers or, my personal favorite, Tarzan.
At the end of each short weekly section the hero would be consigned to sure death and at the beginning of each weekly section he would be saved from the certain death promised the week before. Sometimes the saving would be so improbable that even a theater full of gullible ten-year olds would scream with laughter. Some weeks they didn't even come up with a saving strategy. He just was.
Now I'm old and still love movies but I read a lot. Some books are a good read till you get near the end. Then it's as if the author said, "I'm tired of this book. Time to end it."
I just finished a book where the ending was brought about by two characters who had been killed earlier in the book. Now one had been killed about 150 earlier but the only evidence of his being killed was the protagonist, and killer, had said he was killed. Aha! He lied. The second Lazarus was killed not far before the end of the book. The killer hugged him, shot him three times with the pistol pressed against his chest, and, son-of-a-gun, never noticed her was wearing a bullet-proof vest. He then buried the guy but the guy dug him self out of the grave, a neat trick, and lived.
In the cliff-hangers of my youth I'd invested only fifteen minutes watching the selected short. The ending, for the segment, was exciting and the rescue often hilarious, but when it's a book, it seriously irritates me.
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